


Return to Atlantic City

by fortywinks (ballantine)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Amnesia, Case Fic, Double-Blind Fake Dating, M/M, Pre-Canon, Season/Series 02, Sharing a Bed, Sleepwalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 05:38:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 44,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15357429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/fortywinks
Summary: The one about the brothers is an old favorite. It's even a happy story, if you know where in the telling to stop.





	Return to Atlantic City

**Author's Note:**

  * For [puckity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/puckity/gifts).



By now the edges distinguishing one from the other have blurred irretrievably. They've lost context for almost everything to the slipstream of time, but it's not so bad. There are worse things. They pass their existence with travels and stories, and they think it's not so different to how they used to be.

The one about the brothers is an old favorite. It's even a happy story, if you know where in the telling to stop.

 

 **Part I: Letting Go _  
_ ** _Summer '03_

 

Sam gets out of his last final on a Thursday.

He stands back under the large sycamore outside the humanities building to get his bearings. He's never seen the campus so empty, not even over winter break. The festive, almost manic mood that had been building in the quad over the past week has burst in a final exhalation of relief; second semester was definitively over.

He doesn't know how to feel about it.

He's never stayed in one place this long in his entire life, never spent an entire school year _at the same school_ , so he's kind of feeling everything at once. He's tired but restless. He's exhilarated ( _I_ _did it, fuck you Dad)_ but melancholy ( _I did it, Dean, can you believe it)_.

A couple other students who also finished the exam early pass by, nodding at him but not stopping to talk, because everybody has places to be on such a gorgeous summer day.

He doesn't quite know what to do with himself. He put off making plans all through the end of the semester, told himself it was because he needed to focus on studying, but really he just was avoiding a decision.

Studying and classes were easy, straightforward. Making a deliberate choice about what to do with his spare time – not so much. He'd never had the choice in previous summers; the last days of school had always been marked with a dimming countdown to three months nonstop hunting.

Most of his friends had finished earlier in the week and promptly took off for exotic locales or demanding summer internships. Sam had been offered both and, for reasons he didn't want to look at head-on, politely declined. He has a small research gig arranged with his folklore professor, but that doesn't start until the middle of July.

So now here he is, standing empty-handed on a deserted lawn, longing for something he knows for a fact he doesn't actually want. The Germans probably have a word for that, or the Ancient Greeks maybe.

Eventually he shakes his head and mutters to himself, “So stupid.” He sets off across campus to his dorm, which he needs to be cleared out of by five.

Most of his stuff is already packed. He'd been shocked at how much he'd accumulated over the course of the year, the sheer amount of possessions eliciting both ascetic disgust and rebellious pleasure in equal measure. He doesn't know where he's going to move all of it, has a half-formed idea of finding a cheap motel for the night. Like maybe surrounding himself with a little diluted glamour of his old life will jumpstart his motivation to sort his shit out.

Head down, he skirts around the dumping grounds temporarily occupying the student parking lot closest to his building.

In the last week, the university placed an industrially-sized dumpster across several parking spots, and it has attracted what looks like the entire inventory of a thrift store. In their haste to move out, students discarded all sorts of perfectly usable items – an ironing board here, a toaster oven there. Taken as a sum, it could easily outfit an apartment, one that would be nicer than any of the places Sam lived in as a kid. It's the very portrait of affluent waste, but after nine months Sam's almost used to it.

So it's not that which causes him to trip to a standstill and stare – it's the guy dozing on a leather recliner in the middle of all the chaos.

Sam blinks and stares some more.

Dean looks like he'd thrown himself on the chair intending to pose nonchalantly with his hands behind his head, but at some point his plan went awry and he fell asleep. Now his arms are dangling awkwardly from the armrests and his head is rolled to the side, dislodging his sunglasses. His mouth is hanging open slightly.

Something moves out of the corner of Sam's eye, and he reluctantly looks away from his brother and over at the approaching CSO.

The officer indicates Dean with a jerk of his thumb. “You know him?”

With his leather jacket and heavy boots, Dean doesn't really look like he belongs in the state, let alone on Stanford's campus.

At Sam's wordless nod, the officer says, “Well get him off there. This area is for dumping, not loitering.”

Sam can only nod again. When he turns back, he finds his brother awake.

Dean sits up and stretches, long and lazy. He flashes him a bright grin, like this whole thing is absolutely nothing at all. “Hey Sammy.”

And Sam says, with something only he might recognize as relief:

“Dean.”

 

“Wait, you're telling me all that shit's just gonna get thrown out?”

Dean's at his shoulder, bouncing impatiently as Sam fumbles for his dorm key. He keeps looking around the hallway and common room opposite with a narrowed, sharp eye, like he's trying to picture Sam existing in such a place.

Less than five minutes back in his brother's company, and Sam is finding it hard to picture himself. It makes him twitchy, his impulses darting between wanting to haul Dean in for a hug and turning and running until he can breathe free and clear again.

“The university might have an agreement with Good Will,” he says, distracted and without much conviction, “I didn't really investigate their policy on it. Was kind of busy studying.”

“Of course you were,” says Dean with a sigh, like the idea of a college student studying is completely ridiculous. Sam rolls his eyes. He's facing the door, so it's not like Dean can even see him do it, but the motion feels vital for his hastily-recalled coping system.

He turns the key and, with only a quick breath for preparation, opens the door to his room.

His building is one of the older dorms on campus, valued by the university for its historic architecture and dreaded by freshmen and housing lottery losers for its small rooms and antiquated plumbing fixtures. Sam had loved it instantly.

His room’s small and not much to look at. The white paint on the walls could probably be peeled back layer-by-layer like the rings of a tree to determine how many students have lived here before. It's furnished with a simple wooden desk and chair, both which are currently covered with stacks of notepads and textbooks. His bed is in the corner, perfectly made even in the midst of finals, because he wasn't able to lose the habit even out from under John’s Marine eye.

He watches Dean's attention immediately snag on the far wall, where a second bed is hoisted up, its accompanying desk tucked underneath and out of the way.

Earlier in the year, he'd had a roommate from some middling town in Michigan – Stanford being what it was, Sam supposes that the two of them passed for compatible on the housing forms: both of them quiet, studious, and ostensibly from the midwest.

That lasted about as long as it took for Sam to start having recurring nightmares and bouts of sleepwalking. Turns out not everyone knows how to deal with waking up to their roommate standing over them mumbling in Latin or shouting from the other side of the room – who knew?

“You know Stanford has mental health services on campus, right?” David said before moving out, like he suspected Sam had been abused or something.

It took him over a month to get used to the new silence of his room, but there were worse burdens to bear. In time, he convinced himself that he actually preferred it. Pretending to be normal every day was a lot easier when he could take breaks in the privacy of his own space.

“How was your roommate?” Dean asks, wandering around the small room. “He still around?”

Sam turns from stuffing the last of his books into a box and eyes him narrowly. Is Dean pretending to not know, like he expects Sam to buy that he hadn't checked up on him at any point in the past nine months?

Dean catches the look and makes a caught-out face. “What?”

“Nothing.” Sam goes back to the box, but he can't help but steal a glance every few seconds. “I didn't have a roommate – housing mixup. Got the room to myself.”

Dean nods and manages a decent job of looking like he believes him.

“I didn't hear from you over winter break,” Sam says, and is promptly mortified. He keeps packing, mechanical and determined to let the moment pass. He doesn't look over at his brother again.

Dean is silent for a moment before clearing his throat. “Uh, yeah – me and Dad were up in Maine on a hunt.”

Sam nods down at the box. It's full and ready to be folded close. “What was the hunt?”

“Kelpie. It was disguising itself as an ice fisherman. Killing the competition.”

“Competition?”

“Some kind of ice fishing contest – _look_ ,” Dean says abruptly, “Sammy, me and Dad, we knew you were working all through break, otherwise we woulda – ”

“Sure,” Sam says quickly. “I know, I get it. Don't worry about it, Dean.”

Neither of them voice the obvious truth that John was still obviously pissed at him. There was never any chance he was going to bother seeing Sam at Christmas.

Dean drops his casual air, expression emerging with honest stress, and Sam notices everything he hadn't earlier, even while his brother was passed out on the armchair down in the parking lot – Dean is _exhausted_. His eyes are underlined with faint shadows that don't belong on a young face, and he looks like he's dropped a few pounds since Sam last saw him. (Dad was never big on sit-down meals; they probably all but ceased completely without Sam around to insist.)

Sam swallows down his resentment, guilt, and worry. He finishes packing in silence.

In the end all his possessions amount to four boxes and a duffle bag, which is less than he expected. Turns out that even after a year off the road, he still packs like he's going to be moving at short notice. He sees Dean take this all in but cuts his eyes away before he's forced to see his reaction.

“So where were you headed with all this – stuff,” Dean asks.

He jumps on the change in subject. “Does it matter what I tell you, or are you going to hit the child safety locks and head for the interstate the moment I'm in the car?”

“Dude,” Dean protests. He waits for it: “...You know the Impala doesn't have child safety locks.”

Sam smirks faintly and nods, turning away with his duffle and a box under one arm.

“Hey, you better not be expecting me to carry your shit down,” Dean calls after him as he heads for the door. “I mean it, Sam. Makes no difference to me what you leave here.”

He slips out the door and walks down the hall. A few seconds later he hears a fumbled box and a muffled curse, and a grin bursts hard across his face. But there's no one in the hallway to see it, so that's all right.

* * *

Sam sinks down into the Impala with relief, and is immediately annoyed at himself for being relieved.

In January, a friend came back to campus and talked about missing his hometown, a place he always thought he hated but somehow missed during first semester. After winter break, he said was ready to move on, and Sam wondered if it was really as easy as all that — get an inoculation and never have to miss it again, not the road nor the landscape. His brother.

He wonders if this is maybe his chance to find out.

Dean is behind the car somewhere, swearing about Sam as he tries to force the final box to fit in the trunk. He refused to stack any of them on the back seat, like some books in cardboard might scuff up leather that has already withstood years of abuse via blood and sweat and whatever else Dean has gotten up to with innumerable fresh-faced girls across the country.

(Sam's not dumb; he knows Dean just doesn't want to see the boxes in the rearview mirror, doesn't want the reminder when they drive out of here that it's only temporary. But he's as happy to ignore this truth as Dean is.)

At last, the Impala's trunk is closed with a definitive slam. Seconds later, Dean opens the driver's door and sinks down behind the wheel. He's sweating slightly, the short damp hair at his temples looking like dark and soft.

“You know,” Sam says, clinging instinctively to brotherly mockery, “I get the jacket is part of your studied badass look, but I think you can safely dispense with it when it's over eighty out.”

Dean grunts and turns the ignition. Sam ignores the twinge of helpless nostalgia that blooms at the sound of the engine.

He reaches for the A/C, but Dean says, “It's busted.” And when Sam immediately turns a disbelieving look on him, he protests, “What? It went out just past Vegas, I didn't have time to fix it.”

“Just tell me we aren't driving south,” he says. It can't be his imagination that the car feels ten degrees warmer than it did when he first got in it.

Dean grins at him; in a few minutes, Sam will realize it's because, in that moment, he basically agreed to a road trip with no plan and no destination, and Dean didn't even have to ask.

They make a quick stop at Housing to drop off his dorm key before starting to navigate their way out of the bay area. They don't drive south.

Not that it matters much; the entire lower 48 manage, through some climatological decree, on being very hot in the summer, regardless of whether you are in Washington state or Florida. Sam knows the only real difference lies in whether you want your heat in the flavor of uncomfortable or homicidal.

As it is, it's only the beginning of June, and therefore not so bad. Dean announces they'll hit Coos Bay before stopping, and Sam can think of many worse ways to spend a day than driving up the California 101.

He's asleep before they even hit the Golden Gate.

He wakes up sometime in the early afternoon, his head rolling against the passenger window, green cliffside racing past. He lifts his head and looks at the ocean crashing forward on their left.

“Coastal route?” he asks needlessly.

Dean's shoulders lift and fall. He's still wearing the jacket. “Haven't seen the Pacific in a while.”

Sam's not going to argue with the ocean breeze coming in through the cracked windows. His jaw cracks open in a wide yawn, and he twists around in his seat, investigatory. “Got any food?”

Dean cuts him a glance, lips sliding up in a smug smirk. He shakes his head. “Man, some things just don't change.”

“Shut up. Haven't eaten since last night.”

The smirk turns into a frown. “You skipping meals?”

Speaking of things not changing. “Just breakfast before my final. Relax.” Sam gives up scouring the car and turns back to him. “Well?”

Dean nods at the glove compartment. “Should be some jerky or something in there, I think.”

Sam retrieves the peppered beef jerky and sets upon it with the type of eagerness that can only be engendered through a year's distance and fourteen hours without food. After, he slumps down in his seat and watches the ocean for a while.

“If we see a seafood truck, we should stop. Haven't had clam chowder in forever.”

Dean pulls a disgusted face. “Too damn hot for clam chowder. Wouldn't say no to some of those tiny fried squid, though.”

“Calamari,” Sam says. “And maybe you wouldn't think it was too hot if you weren't wearing a leather jacket in a black car with no air conditioning.”

Dean tosses him a vaguely irritated look. “What's with you and this jacket, man?”

Dean's been wearing it since he was a teenager, but it still invariably makes Sam think of Dad. He's not going to admit that, though, so he just rolls his eyes and lets the subject drop.

 

They stop at a drive-up motel on the outskirts of Coos Bay. It's the kind of establishment that stretches the definition of _seaside_ to include a quarter-mile and a set of train tracks from a public fishing pier that has seen better days.

Sam stretches as he gets out, body having not experienced the particular joy of a day spent on the car's bench seat in almost a year. Dean merely rolls his shoulders before setting off for the front office. He is actually whistling as he goes.

Sam turns in place and leans back against the solid bulk of the Impala. He breathes in the air; it doesn't smell like the ocean, exactly, but it does have that distinct tang of sea water that all small coastal towns seem to be steeped in. Stanford seems distant already, but for the moment it's a comforting sort of distance, clearly defined by the knowledge that he'll be returning soon enough.

He's never had a place to return _to_ , except maybe Uncle Bobby's when they were kids. He likes it.

“Sam, think fast,” is the only warning he gets, but it's enough – he catches the room key before it can hit him in the face. Didn't even have to look; he's a little smug about that, a feeling that only grows when he sees his brother's face.

After barely a second, Dean rolls his eyes. “Okay, hotshot. Good to know you haven't let all your reflexes wither away at the library.”

They grab their respective duffle bags and go inside. The interior is mercifully normal, except for a highly questionable painting of a mermaid above one of the beds. Sam supposes it's supposed to serve as a reminder that they're on the coast.

They both take in the painting for a moment. Sam thinks there's something almost demonic about the mermaid's leer.

“I'll take this bed,” Dean says, staking his claim by throwing his duffle down.

Sam opens his mouth to object on principle, but changes his mind at the last second. He shakes his head. “Fine. Not like I can see it from the vantage point of my pillow.”

Dean looks sharply back at him, and his eyes helplessly flick up to the painting over his shoulder. By the look of regret crossing his face, he immediately understands the error in his strategy.

“You can have first shower,” Sam says cheerfully.

 

When Sam gets out of the bathroom half an hour later, Dean is standing between the beds, stripped down to boxer briefs and fiddling ineffectually with a length of gauze.

Sam is over by his side in an instant. He grabs his elbow to better angle the long gash running the length of his upper arm towards the light. The cut doesn't look too deep, a few stitches in the middle and the rest left to butterfly tape.

“What the hell?” The stitches are too crooked to be John's work; Dean had done them himself.

“Shut up,” Dean says, automatic and without heat. He tugs his arm away. “It's fine. Get outta my light.”

Sam compromises by stepping to the side but not back, and watches with compressed lips as his brother continues trying to rewrap the cut.

He wants to ask what the hunt was, and he also doesn't want to know. Wants to ask why Dean was alone, why he had to patch himself up, but doesn't want to face the obvious answer staring at him from the mirror on the wall opposite the beds.

If he looks over at the mirror, he knows what the reflection will be – two bodies, tidally locked to one another, orbiting an absent, distant father. It's the same push-and-pull contradiction he's felt in his bones for years, and he'd been hoping he could get through one day with Dean before feeling it again.

His own mind will hold Dean for ransom if he lets it. His throat is tight.

After watching the gauze unravel and collapse in a loose loop at the crook of Dean's arm for a third time, he finally bats his hand to the side and takes over. He has the arm firmly bandaged and taped in less than thirty seconds.

He looks up from the gauze and meets Dean's gaze.

His eyes are dark and heated, and there's maybe a question forming in them. It's enough to make Sam tense further, but in the end, Dean just smirks and gives him a numbing punch to the arm.

“Thanks, champ.”

 

Later that evening they walk across town to the dilapidated public pier and share a bottle of Jim Beam by the water.

Even with the moon mostly full, it's still dark to enough to hide Sam's expression, the floorboard of which he can feel getting pried up with every mouthful of whiskey. The mouth of the bottle is warm from Dean's own pulls.

They don't talk much.

Used to be, they never really needed to talk when they were hanging out down by the ocean or whatever passed for a body of water further inland. When Sam was sixteen, he tried researching it, memorized all sorts of lore about the power and potential of water. Half of it was crap because as far as they could tell, there's no such thing as fairies. And nothing else explained the way his family could descend into companionable silence, how they could be at each other's throats one moment, but bleeding out all tension on a shore the next.

The silence between them now is – different, somehow. They communicate as much in glances as words, shoulders occasionally jostling, building to one of them almost tipping off into the water before by mutual agreement settling again. _That_ has the veneer of normality, but there's an alien tension present, one Sam can't identify. And what it does remind him of, he won't acknowledge.

During the peak of exam stress, he'd dreamed of sitting with Dean by water. A lake, maybe. They were old men, but that's all Sam can remember – not the details of how Dean looked with grey hair and wrinkles, nor whether either of them had wedding rings. He'd woken up with wet cheeks and told himself it was sweat. The A/C unit in the window had been broken for a week, after all.

“All right, back to the room.” Dean is standing and lightly poking the back of Sam's head.

“Can't walk,” he says, choosing to demonstrate this by lying back on the dock. He smiles muzzily up at him. This might be the first time he's drank in almost five months, might have drank a little more than usual to dodge the weird feeling hanging over the night.

“Can't walk,” Dean repeats, incredulous.

“Call a cab.”

“Call a _cab_ ,” says his brother the parrot. Mockery in his voice that Sam is going to defensively read as fond amusement. “Got fancy with your drinking out, I see. What, staggering home not good enough for you?”

“Missed my counterweight,” Sam mumbles, but Dean doesn't hear him.

“And I see you still can't hold your liquor for shit.” He sighs and reaches down. “Don't make me drag you by your ankles, Sammy.”

“Can't lift me, huh.” Sam feels very smug about this.

“I may not have finished high school, but I have a graduate degree in reverse psychology of the Sam Winchester variety.” Dean reaches over and pats him on the stomach.

Sam feels his abs jump at the contact and his whole body goes stiff out of startlement and sudden, belated recognition. Dean pauses, surprised, but after a short, charged silence, he only says gruffly, “C'mon, jackass. I've been driving all day. Let's go back to the room.”

Sam blinks up at the hand that has appeared in his face. He says, dry-mouthed, “Okay. Okay, Dean. Let's do that.”

He slaps his hand in place and lets himself be hauled upright.

* * *

He wakes late in the morning, blinking in confusion around a room that is at least twice as garish in the bright light of the day. In a display of typical brotherly dualism, Dean has thrown the blinds of the windows wide to let the punishing light in, but he's also placed a Gatorade and two aspirin next to his bed.

Sam downs the pills and sports drink without thought. He drags his legs out of bed and sits up and then spends several minutes staring dumbly at the carpet and remembering why he didn't drink much at school.

He's missed breakfast, somehow, but after ten minutes of dull-brained puttering between the room and the bathroom, he finally notices the white paper bag containing a semi-warm breakfast burrito. He eats it in what feels like four bites, shifting on his feet in front of Hot Shots on TNT.

He showers and dresses and can't avoid the day anymore. He yanks the room door open and steps out into the world to see where his brother's gotten to, only to practically trip over him in the parking lot.

 

They stay in Coos Bay for another day so Dean can fix the Impala's A/C.

The sun's fast-tracking across the afternoon while Dean tinkers and talks to the car (Sam wishes he could pretend he was talking to himself, but no: Dean is definitely talking to the car, and it's creepy).

He hasn't said much to Sam after dishing out the expected desserts from last night: Sam's constitution, his lazy ass, his _coddled_ ass – Sam stopped paying attention early on, preoccupied equally by the will not to vomit and by the curious sensation that something was _off_ between them, despite all the ragging. Something Dean didn't want to acknowledge.

Eventually they settle into their respective roles, Dean to his car and Sam to bored observation.

He drags out a plastic white chair from the pool in the back and sits in the sliver of shade provided by the motel overhang. He reads a paperback he'd found squirreled away in the trunk, a copy of _In Cold Blood_ he vaguely remembers stealing from one of his last high schools senior year. He makes mediocre progress, as his eyes keep drifting up to watch Dean fuck around with the car.

It's a familiar sight, but Sam doesn't remember being so focused on the way Dean's shirt rides up over his stomach when he was younger. Doesn't remember catching the smell of him when he walks over to steal some of Sam's ice water and thinking anything but _gross_.

Once Dean's maybe-fixed the A/C he can't help himself and starts tinkering with a shortlist of other minor issues he's probably had bouncing around his head or maybe literally written down on a list in the glove compartment.

Sam finishes his third glass of water and goes to fetch a soda. Cracks it open and slumps back as far as the unforgiving plastic will allow. The sun encroaches more on his pathetic shade with every passing minute.

Soon, he thinks, he's going to drag Dean out from under that car, by his boots if he has to, and make him go get ice cream. Half of him is looking forward to the tussle; anticipation lies just under his skin, which has been going hungry for touch for nine months. The other half is jumping out of that very same skin, and that's _new_ too _._

* * *

It's taken a long year to bring him to this point: in the Impala again, seat back hot against his thin T-shirt, wind of the road whipping at his hair and his brother's voice in his ear. He falls in with Dean like a drunk backsliding after one beer, eyes open but heart helplessly glad and so very sure that, this time, it'll all work out just fine.

* * *

Of course then it's four nights and three states later and Sam sleepwalks, cracking the delicate balance they've been managing in the meantime.

They've been operating under an unspoken agreement to just drive and pretend things are normal, that they are normal brothers on a normal road trip, that the gaping unclosed wound created in Grand Junction isn't still bleeding out over everything. Sam will go back to Stanford in a few weeks and Dean will be okay with it. Dean will return to stalking monsters in the shadows and Sam will live with that.

Perhaps it should have been harder to avoid talking about the mass of issues between them, but in fact that's the easiest part. Comes standard, in fact, with a John Winchester upbringing.

It helps that they've both changed in the past year.

Sam isn't just taller – he knows he also carries himself a little differently, that his little brother defensiveness and sarcasm have started to settle into his own version of confidence, a different flavor to Dean's crowd-capturing swagger.

And as for Dean – bizarrely, a year on the road has left him more grounded in himself. Like now that he's finally free from jumping school districts and the practice of settling down for a few months at a time, he could dig in his heels internally. He's slightly quieter than Sam remembers, except in the moments when he's hollering along obnoxiously to the radio or chewing with his mouth open just to provoke Sam into making a face.

The changes are enough to keep them both focused on the present rather than their shared past. They drive and eat greasy food. They visit roadside tourist traps and half-jokingly spar on the skinny stretches of rest stop grass that don't allow dogs. Sam's facial muscles are getting enough exercise to almost make up for the hours of sitting in a car.

But the whole time, a growing awareness is unfurling in his mind. Moments where he should be relaxed, he finds himself braced and tense. Dean will casually assume Sam's preference for dinner or claim a decision on where to go without asking, and he'll jerk back in surprise when Sam disagrees.

They don't fight, it's not like that, but it's still somehow worse than when he was seventeen and bucking under the press of Dad's thumb – because this time it's _Dean_ and it was supposed to be easy with him. Even back when he was driven to exhausted fury, throat rough from shouting, eyes dry and stinging from late nights studying, he could go to Dean. Now all they seem to do is bump up against where they no longer fit together.

It's not that they've grown apart, Sam thinks, so much as maybe they've grown out of each other. He finds the thought equal parts thrilling and throat-tighteningly sad.

And then there's the other thing. The thing he noticed that first night that he can't bring himself to think about, can't even put into _words_ , because defining something is the first step to any proof of existence. Basic theoretical underpinning of mathematics and spell work.

This all churns under the surface of his days, and there's no break from it, no moment where he's not aware of Dean in this new awful way.

So it shouldn't be a surprise when the stress gets to him and he comes to alone under a roaring freeway in the dead of night.

 

He's standing near an on-ramp. He blinks down at himself, sees that he's at least wearing boxers and shoes. No socks, though.

His name is being called – no, _shouted_.

“Dean?” Sam raises his head and looks around.

There's no windbreak this close to the freeway, and he has to squint against the strong gusts coming across the prairie. The wind is warm on his bare skin, but stinging from the force.

The Impala approaches, its unmistakable headlights cutting through the dark night. It slows to a crawl and he wastes no time in yanking the door open and climbing in, and all the while, Dean is shouting, “What the fuck, Sam, what the _fuck_ is wrong with you?”

He shakes his head, avoiding his gaze. “Can we just go back to the room?”

A muscle ticks in Dean's jaw, but all the same, he pulls a hard U on the thankfully empty road and starts heading back to the small town.

Sam rubs his hands along the tops of his bare thighs, fingertips dragging against the goose-pimpled flesh and hair. This was so much worse than anything that happened at Stanford.

To his surprise and private dread, Dean doesn't blow up further; in fact, he stays silent for the entire drive. It takes several minutes to get back to the hotel. Sam had made it a long way.

Thank god his sleepwalking self had elected to slip on a pair of shoes. Very sensible, Sam thought somewhat unsteadily.

Tension somehow finds room to grow as Dean swings into the parking lot and throws the car into park. His movements are uncharacteristically rough on the car, like if he can't take his temper out on one thing he loves, he'll do it to the other.

Sam's out of the car before the engine gets cut, but then has to stand and wait for Dean to unlock the room door. He forces his hands to stay down by his sides, not wanting to look as awkward as he feels standing out in the open with no clothes on.

Dean doesn't look at him as he lets them in the room, but the moment the door clicks shut, he's rounding on Sam, furious.

Sam sits on his bed and bends to untie his shoes. “I don't want to hear it.”

This draws a harsh laugh. “Well, _tough_. That's not an option, not when I find you streaking down the shoulder of I-94 in the middle of the night.”

Sam frowns down at the knot in his laces. His sleepwalking self had been thorough _._

Dean doesn't let up. “So we're going to talk – I mean, what the hell, Sam? When did you start sleepwalking again?”

Sam loses patience and rips the shoe off without untying the laces. He tosses it into the corner and starts in on the other one. “It's not that big a deal.”

“Bullshit,” Dean snaps. “I mean, if _Dad_ knew you were out in California just wandering around at night with no protection – ”

“Yeah, that went great the first time around.”

It had been a rough winter, John laid up with a broken leg and could only afford whiskey as a painkiller. The three of them going stir-crazy in this tiny one-room cabin a friend had offered up. Middle of one night in late January, Sam had walked out into the snow laden woods in just his PJs; after carrying him back inside, John locked him in a salt-lined closet and yelled exorcisms through the door for ten minutes. Between the words, Sam could hear Dean pleading with John to just open the door and let him go to him.

“He nearly had a heart attack,” Dean says.

“That makes two of us. Difference was, I was _ten_.” Sam stands up. “Look, it's none of his business. Same as it's none of his business what courses I take. He's out of my life, Dean. He doesn't get to pick and choose what he cares about.”

Dean looks like he wants to argue that point, but instead he takes a long breath and says, “Okay, Claudia Kincaid. What about me?”

Sam can't say which startles him more, the question or the reference. “What?”

Dean steps up to him, close enough that neither of them are able to ignore the new height difference. It only seems to serve to make his gaze hotter. He repeats, low and deliberate, wielding his concern like a blunt force instrument, “What about me, Sam? I send you cash for food, I'm here with you now. Do I have your permission to give a shit?”

It takes effort to bite off the words that want to spill out, words he knows he'd regret later. Fighting with Dean was always worse than fighting Dad. It always managed to take him by surprise. Almost nineteen years, and Sam has never grown used to his brother not being on his side.

“It's only happened a few times,” Sam tells Dean now; stepping down, easing back. “I swear, Dean, the farthest I've walked is into the dorm common room. Tonight, this was – an anomaly.”

Dean searches his face. “You sure about that?”

“Yeah.” Sam pauses and cracks a slight smile. “I can't believe you remember Claudia Kincaid.”

Dean rolls his eyes and looks away. He's flushing slightly. “You kidding? You wouldn't shut up about wanting to live in the Met for like five months.”

“You know the reference doesn't work, though, right? I didn't run away, I went to college.”

Dean lifts a hand and makes a seesaw motion, but after a second, Sam decides to let that one go. He's still looking a little tense, but it's the middle of the night. They're both reluctant to push things further.

“Okay,” Dean says at last. He runs a hand over his head, suddenly looking exhausted.

Sam is cautious. “Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.” Dean turns away and strips off his jacket. Underneath he's bare-chested. Just before going into the bathroom, he says over his shoulder, “Go back to sleep, man.”

Once he's alone in the room again, Sam sits down on the edge of his bed and rubs his face. Eventually he lies back.

He's still awake when the bathroom door opens and the light clicks quietly off, but unprepared for when the entire bed lifts and shifts two feet over, until it's snug against the wall.

“Uh,” says Sam interrogatively.

Then it gets worse; the mattress beside him dips with Dean's weight. Sam leverages himself up on one arm and scowls across the darkness. “ _Seriously_?”

Modern notions of privacy and space don't quite catch when you grow up poor and constantly on the move, so neither of them have ever thought much about sharing a bed. But it's one thing to sleep together when you're three people in a single motel room with a pull-out couch, and an entirely different matter when there are actual choices at hand. Choices like the _second bed_ less than five feet away.

Dean punches his pillow and wriggles down under the sheets, unbothered. “Yeah, seriously. Can't get out of the room without going through me first.” He kicks at Sam's calves. “Now shove over, your gigantic limbs are hogging all the space.”

Sam's first impulse is to argue. But fatigue is still dragging at his limbs and eyes, and frankly, it just doesn't seem worth it. Tomorrow's another story, he tells himself. He slumps back down on his own pillow, back turned resolutely against his jailer.

He's asleep within minutes.

* * *

That's the start of it, maybe. The night that took his teetering equilibrium and tackled it headlong over a cliff.

They're on more familiar roads now, the midwest the closest Sam's ever had to what one might call a hometown. They pass highway exits and his mind fills in the end of the sentence: _follow that road south through town and visit Pastor Jim; go east through Lewiston and hook up with Highway 130 to go see Caleb_.

The day before, he'd been staring across the flat eternity of North Dakota and he'd had a jolt of a realization that he was an adult now, no longer under his Dad's edict, and could go see Bobby Singer. It was a strange thought, the idea that the road was now wide open to him. He could go anywhere.

Sam has driven across the country, coast-to-coast and border-to-border, more times than he can count. It's given him an understanding of the road few people outside truckers, bus league players, and members of a presidential campaign might appreciate.

The thing is that one can get sick of most of it – the terrible food; the intermittent stretches where the only thing on the radio is bible sermons or conservative talk shows; the feeling of the sun slow-cooking you through the windshield because you always, _always_ seem to end up on the wrong side of the car for the time of day.

But then the highway will bend and the land will be laid out wide and open _just so,_ dappled with the strangely distinct shadow of a passing cloud high over head in a way one could never see anywhere with manmade structures, and suddenly it's all okay, just for a moment.

Dean, of course, has never given any indication that he minds any of it, his mind molded from childhood to break some transcendental barrier and attain a higher plane of zen. Ask him to try to sit in a quiet room and meditate and he'll be fidgeting and complaining within three minutes. But put him on a road and he can go days without really moving or speaking.

For the first week, Sam doesn't think about where they're headed. When you're on the road in a serious way, going cross-country, you almost have to forget your final destination – and that's not some beatnik philosophy, it's plain survival. Sam, always in-bound or out-bound from class or the library, always needing his laptop, a newspaper, a book – he couldn't help but latch onto those helpful highway mile signs. He knows they will drive him crazy if he isn't careful.

And so, watching farmland slowly overtake the prairie as they reenter civilization, his mind starts quietly working in the background.

Dean hasn't so much as glanced at a newspaper since he picked up Sam. And, aside from the occasional “that billboard looks like a cross between a chupacabra and that waitress we had in Billings,” he hasn't attempted to talk about hunting at all. If it didn't make his head spin from the sheer absurdity of the idea, Sam might almost think Dean was trying to be diplomatic.

All of this is a long way of getting around to admitting: it's not Dean's fault, what happens.

It would be easier for Sam if it was Dean who first noticed the case. A couple years down the line and he’ll have almost convinced himself he _had_ , will conveniently suppress that it was himself who saw the first short article on Page 9B of the _Pioneer Press_ one morning in a diner in St Cloud, MN. And then the slightly longer follow-up in the _Milwaukee Journal Sentinel_ the next day. That it was Sam who, slumped yawning over a spread-out copy of the _Joplin Globe_ a few days after that, said:

“I think there’s something weird going on in Chicago.”

He says it without thinking, only halfway through his first cup of coffee and lulled into complacency by a week of living old patterns. After a second he realizes what he said, what it means, and looks up to find Dean has gone deathly still across the motel room.

He steels himself as Dean says slowly, “Weird. Weird like — ”

“Like a hunt,” Sam says. He's biting the bullet, yeah, but he's also heading Dean off before he can say _our kind of weird._

There's withheld motion screaming through Dean’s body now, like a greyhound waiting for the racetrack door to swing open. Sam thinks longingly for a moment of a normal summer break, of lazy days on the road that last only 7 or 8 hours instead of 10 or 12. Then he straightens up, reaches for his laptop, and says — over his shoulder so he won't have to look at Dean as the gate swings open and the hare takes off:

“How do you feel about backtracking?”

And so, that's that.

 

They hit Chicago and tear through the hunt – spirit work, a salt and burn that goes off without a hitch, minus the cemetery security that gives chase through what feels like half of Uptown. After, Sam's panting and his whole body feels sore, but in a satisfied way that's undeniably good. Dean's grinning at him like he's the best thing he's ever seen, and that that's undeniably good too.

So they start taking cases. It's like cracking a knuckle – all the strange tension and awkwardness disappears, gets subsumed by the hunt. They work well together – better than well, _great_. In the back of his mind, Sam thinks this is somehow even worse, like maybe they're capable of losing their brotherly bond but the hunt? That shit's _engrained_.

They hadn't hunted too many times alone or without Dad. Most of the times the Winchesters operated like a kamikaze plane: deathly effective but inherently self-destructive. Near the end, Sam would find himself shouting, _why do you even want me here? We fight so bad, why even bother with me?_ Caleb used to say that if there had been a way to run a hunt double-blind, they would've been the best team in North America.

Sam has always wondered what it is like to travel somewhere without an ulterior motive, a trip for no other reason than _they heard the production of this one play was good_ or the _restaurants are amazing_ and not _a father of three was slaughtered in a locked garage._ Except the latter sparks interest in his brain, pulls at him in the way the play doesn't, and he can admit that. Now that he knows he's following a different path in the long run and that this won't be his life, he can finally admit that.

They chase hauntings and corpses back up through Wisconsin and the UP. They get lured into Canada on a rumor of a hodag that they both kind of know is bullshit, but they eat their fill of poutine before heading back across the border. Sam doesn't sleepwalk again, and he almost manages to convince himself that he feels nothing abnormal when he looks at Dean.

 

But the good times don't last, because they never do, and Sam feels obscurely betrayed, because he always does.

They catch wind of a series of suspicious disappearances in the hills of Kentucky, so Dean points the Impala south and they eat up asphalt all through the day and night.

They find a spriggan hiding out in an old mineshaft; in the subsequent brawl, Dean shoves Sam out of the way and almost finds his grave at the bottom of a slurry pit. Sam puts five consecrated iron bullets into the sprite's chest and head. He's shaking with terror and rage after it's dead and says nothing before leaving Dean to burn the damn thing.

Dean's almost tentative when he comes find him an hour later, sitting out in the clear-cut air of the topless mountain. The wind's blowing cross at them, and it makes Dean's squinting appraisal looking more concerned than Sam knows it to actually be.

Dean doesn't apologize for shoving Sam out of the way; Sam doesn't yell at him. This is what passes for compromise among Winchesters. He'd forgotten the precise flavor of this helplessness.

They don't hang around down in town after, just pile silently into the car and drive on.

* * *

He wakes with a violent start. His jaw is aching from grinding his teeth and the muscles in his neck and shoulders feel tired from struggling against restraints.

“Thank fuck,” Dean mutters, his voice startlingly intimate in his ear. With a hot rush, he realizes the restraining force is actually Dean, his arms wrapped around him in a tight double band. He's also half-hard, which makes something in Sam lurch in panic, and he throws an elbow back. Gets a knee to the thigh in return.

Dean says sharply, “Hey, knock it off. I've just spent the past twenty minutes stopping you from taking a midnight jog. I'm _tired_.”

“Well I'm awake now, so you can let go.” He's going for annoyance, but thinks he misses it by a wide mark and just sounds breathless.

Dean is still for a long, terrible moment, and Sam feels like holding his breath. Finally, his arms obligingly slip away. He turns in place to burrow down into his own pillow. “If you try to sleepwalk again tonight, dude, I'll kill you.”

“Whatever.”

Dean falls back asleep quickly, leaving Sam to spend the next hour staring at the ceiling.

* * *

By mid-morning the day after Dean tries to kill himself via sprite, they’ve sunk Columbus in the rearview and are barely talking through the miles. Somewhere in Pennsylvania, they end up at a family restaurant with no families, where the waitress calls them honey like she wishes they were dead.

“Something in Atlantic City, maybe,” says Sam, after their plastic-backed menus have been snatched back.

He just barely tolerates the way Dean immediately perks up, like he thinks because Sam’s talking about the next hunt, he must be over Kentucky.

He has two clipped news articles and notes collected in a cheap spiral-bound notebook he'd bought after the second hunt. He pulls it out of his backpack and hands it to Dean, who takes it but doesn't look down or open it. His attention is completely centered on Sam, eyes steady and expectant.

Well, fine, if he's going to be like that – Sam takes the notebook back. Dean probably wouldn't appreciate the meticulous cataloging and annotations anyway.

“There's been four – maimings, I guess you could call them. One kid lost a leg, a woman all her fingers,” Sam flips the notes and immediately asks himself how he could have forgotten: “a man's eye was taken– he died, actually – and uh, another man lost his. His dick.”

“His _dick?_ ” Dean repeats. Loudly.

Sam grimaces and nods.

“Jesus. All right.”

“They were all labelled freak accidents, except Gary Walton – he's the one who died. Looks like he tripped and fell on an ice pick in the middle of the night. They arrested his girlfriend, one... Amanda Tranel.”

“They think she went a little Sharon Stone on his ass.”

“Basically, yeah.” He sits back in the booth, trying to stretch his back. He's been hunched over the notes of the case, and he's uncomfortably aware that he's adopted a posture not unlike when he was cramming for finals. Between this and the car and he's going to need to start doing yoga or something (but only after back at Stanford and very much out of view of his brother).

Dean eyes him but thankfully doesn't say anything except, “So what caught your eye? A bunch of people had accidents in a major metropolitan area, okay, could be something, could be nothing. What's the connection?”

Sam pulls out the two news clips and slides them across the formica. This time, Dean actually reads them. Sam waits; Dean looks up.

“Walton and Mike No-Dick both work for the TSA. You looked up the others?”

“Susan Laslow is a gate agent for Delta. And the parents of the kid also work in the airport – one's a cashier at Hudson News, the other works in the food court.”

“Huh.” Dean pushes the clips back at him. He rubs his mouth, considering. “Well, there's no way can we just wave a badge and get through airport security. You barely look old enough to shave.”

“Fuck you,” Sam shoots back automatically. But he knows, depressingly, that Dean's right. Last time he tried skipping shaving, he ended up with a patchy monstrosity that somehow only served to make him look _younger_. Dean, meanwhile, hasn't gone completely clean shaven in a couple years, ever since he realized stubble was his only hope in counteracting the pretty boy comments.

The food arrives and Sam starts shuffling his salad around. He sighs. “We'll figure something out. Worst case scenario, we avoid the airport and get at them in their homes.”

It's not the most concrete of plans, but Dean still looks oddly content as he tucks into his burger. Sam thinks darkly that he's probably cheerful about the fried onions and the prospect of Sam's impending suffering.

“Which would you choose?” Dean asks him in the hotel that night. He's standing in the bathroom doorway wearing only his underwear and speaking around a foamy toothbrush.

Sam immediately knows what he's asking; he's been thinking about it all day too. “You mean if I had to lose something?”

Dean turns and spits loudly into the sink. “Let's make it easy and pick from the victims.”

Because that wasn't macabre. “Fingers, I guess.” Though he immediately thinks of all that he wouldn't be able to do – write, type, flip his brother off. But that’s what prosthetics are for.

“Think I'd pick an eye,” Dean reflects. Sam watches him watch himself in the bathroom mirror. “I could rock an eye patch.”

He doesn't want to think about this anymore, not with the likelihood of scarring and permanent disfigurement such a very real potential for Dean. But he has to know: “How do you pick losing half your vision over your fingers?”

“What, these?” Dean turns around waggles them at Sam, a familiar leer starting in his eyes. “No way I'm depriving women of this talent.”

Sam throws Gideon's Bible at him.

* * *

Sam's luck runs out in Atlantic City. If he was in any mood for it, he could admire the thematic consistency, that he looked at his brother smiling at him under the California sun and bet on this all working out – went for broke through hunting and thought it might lead anywhere but dissolution. Gambling hasn't done right by Atlantic City for years; it's only fitting that Sam would fetch up there in time for a real disaster.

* * *

The case starts sour and doesn't readily improve.

First problem is their hotel; they haven’t done much pool hustling since they started taking hunts and it leaves their budget even more constrained than normal.

They end up at an airport hotel — not a clean, multi-story just off the freeway exit that offers free shuttle rides to the terminal, but the cramped midcentury deal that more than likely has at least one ghost hanging around the exposed walkway overlooking the parking lot. Shitholes are the same everywhere, even if this one had a facsimile mini boardwalk in place of a regular walkway.

Standing in the doorway of their newest hovel, Sam has an unwelcome epiphany about why he was so tolerant of his dorm room last year.

Even Dean looks a little leery of the beds. He pinches the top cover and strips it off, throwing it into the corner like a few feet will suddenly make a difference to the germs they'll be exposing their bodies to.

Not for the first time, Sam wishes the Impala was a pickup truck. Or hell, even an El Camino. He could totally sleep in the back of an El Camino, if he put the tailgate down and slept diagonal and didn't care if his feet still hung over the edge.

“You know the guy asked me if I wanted it by the hour?” Dean says. “I think he thought you were my underage hookup.”

“I'm _taller_ than you,” Sam says, looking up from his bag. It's only the tenth or so time he's reminded Dean of this fact since California.

“Right, Sam, that's the problem I had with it too,” says Dean, deadpan.

 

It’s a bit fucked up, but the easiest time they have with any of the witnesses is the dead guy.

No doors slamming in their faces (the Whitneys, when they went by pretending to be J-school students), no one trying to beat Dean up (a white-faced Mike Grillo, when Dean showed up alone pretending to be with Blue Cross Blue Shield), no militant nurses getting in the way (Alice Sobol, who was still in the hospital and refusing all visitors), no front desk staff

But the morgue? The morgue was easy. Their cover as med students wasn’t questioned and all it took was a bribe to get them access to a copy of Gary Walton’s autopsy.

They sit in the Impala after, flipping through the pages. Sam is reading the tox screen while Dean studies the photographs. After a few minutes, he flips one to face Sam and asks him, “What does that look like to you?”

Sam squints over at the photo of Walton’s back. He immediately spots what Dean is asking after — a reddish-brown mark on the back of his neck, just below where a shirt collar might sit.

“Could be a birthmark, but — that look like ancient Hebrew to you?”

Dean looks at the photo again. He sounds unconvinced when he says, “Yeah, maybe.”

But they get no other obvious leads from the report so Dean agrees to hit up the library to research the mark and see what else they can crib from other news articles and interviews with the victims.

It takes Sam hours of squinting at alphabet scripts and and websites on western esotericism, but eventually he locates a symbol close to the one on the Walton’s neck. Sam lifts the photograph and he and Dean look at the two images side by side.

“Yeah,” says Dean again, “ _Maybe_.”

“I almost hope it isn’t,” Sam admits, dropping the photo and clicking to the tab he has waiting. “This is some Golden Dawn-style crap. And you know how messy those turn of the century orders were. We’re looking at a dozen different versions of miracle-working lore at least.”

“...Thaumaturgy,” Dean reads aloud over his shoulder. Sam feels his breath against his face and thinks briefly about telling him to give him a little more space. But before it gets to that point, Dean sits back. “So — a witch?”

“Basically,” he says.

Dean pulls a face. “Haven't tackled a witch in a long time.”

Sam turns to him with a skeptical expression. “When have you ever?”

“I was with Dad in Wabasha, remember?”

“You played _lookout_ in Wabasha.” Sam remembers the hunt clearly, because he'd been left with Pastor Jim. He spent two weeks helping out with Bible study classes and talking with Jim about seminary school. It had been the first time he ever thought seriously about getting out of the life, even if it was to one necessarily adjacent.

“I was the one who grabbed the spell books. They coulda been – cursed, or something.”

Sam stretches in a futile attempt to shake the ache that has taken up residence in his lower back. He slumps back down in his seat. “Sounds like you shouldn't've grabbed them, then. _Sounds_ like the kind of amateur mistake that could leave you slurping food through a straw for the rest of your days.”

“I made sure they weren't cursed before I grabbed them.”

Sam waits, eyebrows raised, and Dean's lips press together.

“Bobby Singer was there, all right?”

“There it is,” he says with satisfaction.

Dean scowls, looking sorely like he wants to slap Sam upside the head. “It's still more experience than _you_ got.”

Sam shrugs. “Didn't say it wasn't.” Sometimes the most effective way to win one on Dean was to not disagree with him. He watches as irritation ticks along his brother's jaw and smirks.

The smirk doesn’t last long over the rest of their stint in the library, which turns into a bit of a trial. Sam knows his way around – in a 'you know a few dozen libraries, you know them all' kind of way – and quickly requisitions a computer station and all the local papers going back two weeks. The only difficulty comes in putting up with Dean.

“Would you stop that?” Sam says as Dean reaches for the keyboard again. “Get your own.”

“Since when are you so territorial?”

“Since when do you actually help with research?” This part was always Sam's to do: Sam the little kid, forever left behind to page through books and hack into databases, fingers and eyes racing against whatever nightmare was coming up against his family.

Dean doesn't say anything, just looks at him a little impatiently; too late, Sam realizes who must have taken over after he left for Stanford.

He bites back a sigh and heaves a week's worth of _Press of Atlantic City_ across the table. They land with a thick _thwap_ , and Dean sneers down at the stack. Sam bristles.

“We need a comprehensive picture of the incidents,” he says pointedly.

“I was on this job before your balls dropped, Sam. Don't start coaching me on the basics.”

He relents, stung and without even the balm of injustice to soothe, and turns back to his own stack.

They sit reading like that for a while, shifting on the old wooden chairs with their sagging cushion centers, brushing shoulders. A couple times Sam uses the computer to check on a detail from one of the articles, and after he always pushes the keyboard back into the middle again, in case Dean wants to use it. He never does.

“So was it like this?” Dean asks after another hour has passed.

Sam rubs his eyes, leaves his head resting against the hand after and angles a look over. “Was what like this?”

“You know. Stanford.”

He pauses and looks over more deliberately, but Dean's eyes are lowered, intent on the comics page at the back of the newspaper. He finished his stack at some point.

“Uh, not really, no.” His words gum up. He tries to picture talking to his brother about what his actual classwork was like, but he's afraid it might uncover a certain unreality if he does, though he couldn't say which half of his life would be the one to go. He's suddenly heartily sick of the library, with its stacks of books and confining walls.

To cover the moment, he sighs and says, “Maybe we should check out the airport after all, collect some first-hand stories from the workers?”

But Dean sits back, immediately resistant. Sam doesn't know if it's because he was the one to suggest it or if he genuinely thinks it’s a bad idea.

“None of the accidents even happened at the airport. Before we go spending my hard-earned – ”

“Hard-stolen – ”

“Hard- _won_ money,” Dean says with a vicious glance, “I think we should exhaust all other possibilities. We don’t even have hands on the police report yet.” He looks pointedly at where Sam’s hands are resting on the keyboard. “College improve those computer skills?”

“Oh yeah,” says Sam. “I was breaking into local police databases all the time at Stanford.”

He’s hoping it will go smoothly, that he’ll be able to shove away from the computer and wave proof of his skills in Dean’s face. But after another half an hour of work, Sam has to look away from the screen and shake his head at Dean, at a loss.

“I'm telling you, man, there's nothing here. Must be a paper file.”

Dean looks briefly stymied, clearly used to this part going more smoothly, paved with their dad's gruff confidence. “There’s no way the station’s going to just hand over that file.”

“Try again with the victims?” Sam suggests, but without much conviction. Mike Grillo hasn’t met him yet, but if he didn’t bite with Dean, it’s highly doubtful he’s going to look at Sam and think he’s anything but a  high school kid playing a prank or something.

Dean shakes his head. “Small group like this, they probably all know each other. And now that we know magic using is involved somehow, there’s too great a likelihood that one or more of them is the culprit. We have to assume they’ve already called and given each other a heads-up. The only person reliably out of the loop is – ”

“The girlfriend,” Sam says.

The sound of the words are blurred at their edges; Dean had spoken them at the same time.

 

They have a carefully-compiled list of questions and sympathetic faces to match when they go to visit Amanda Tranel at the county jail, but it's all for nothing when the woman at the station desk slowly replaces her phone back on its set, and turns to tell them:

“She doesn't want to see you. Any of you,” she clarifies, leaning forward to angle a look past them to a man in neat clothes sitting in one of the stiff-backed chairs against the wall. The man looks up from his two-month-old issue of _Time_ ; he looks annoyed but not surprised – at least not until his gaze shifts to Sam and Dean.

As Sam and the man size each other up with open curiosity, Dean tries a smile on the woman and perseveres. “Could you check again? It's real important – ”

“Yeah, _no_ ,” the woman says. She clasps her hands in front of her on the desk and shrugs. “Lady was real clear. She isn't seeing anyone who isn't her lawyer.”

They make their retreat. The man who had been waiting follows them out the office and down the hallway. He's older than both of them by at least half a decade and the way he looks them over makes Sam keenly aware of things like the wrinkles in his T-shirt or the small tear in Dean's flannel collar.

As if he'd been waiting to clear the building, the man speaks as soon as the door shuts behind them. “So who are you guys, and why do you want to speak to my sister?”

Sam and Dean both turn to him, take in the way he's standing a little combatively. Even the hands in his pockets look unconvincingly casual, and something about him makes Sam want to fidget.

“We're reporters,” Dean says.

The man doesn't even dignify that with a _really?_ and after a moment Sam adds, playing up the awkwardness like he's a real nineteen year old, “...We're interns. With the Weekly.”

“You said you're her brother?” says Dean brightly. “Mind if we ask you a few questions?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I fucking mind.” The man glances back at the doors. “I have nothing to say to you and the same goes for Amanda. You leave us both alone.”

And with that, he stalks away into the parking lot. Sam watches him for a long time, still feeling something weird. It takes Dean saying his name and hitting his arm to snap him out of it, and then he's rubbing the spot and glaring at his brother.

“So, that's weird, right?” Dean says, immune to Sam's look as they start towards the Impala, which Dean had parked in the far back corner of the county lot.

“Maybe,” Sam says. “Or maybe not. It's not like the world's never seen an overbearing, jerk of an older brother before.”

This last part sails completely over Dean's head. Instead, he twitches his shoulders like he's shaking something off. “Man, what is up with our luck today?”

Sam scratches the back of his neck. The case did seem to be hitting more snags than Dad ever had to deal with. Or maybe, he thought with a touch of the old bitterness, this kind of thing happened all the time and they never knew because John kept them in the dark about so much.

“So we gotta break in and steal the police file, right?” Dean says eventually. His tone approximates that of an aggrieved office worker discussing a glitchy printer.

Sam makes a face. Running a case is one thing, but he hadn't planned on committing any jailable offenses on his summer vacation.

“I'll do it,” Dean says. And before Sam can – he doesn't know, argue or thank him or _something_ , he continues, “Not like I can trust you to.”

“What are you talking about it, I could do it,” he protests, standing up straight, aware even as he talks that he's being played like a fiddle.

“Right, sure you could – remember Tempe?”

Sam shakes his head in disgust but doesn't say anything. Fucking Tempe.

 

It's dark and he's behind the wheel of the Impala in an alleyway two blocks over from the police station. He can't even enjoy the rare privilege because his brother is off committing a felony.

He taps the wheel. He can't shake the impatient tension that's occupied him since Dean first disappeared around the corner. This is the longest he's been out of his sight since California. He knows he's a little messed up in the head nowadays, knows he shouldn't associate some badly-needed alone time with mortal peril, but he does and has almost two decades or thereabouts to offer up in defense. And his dad wondered why he was so moody all the time.

He sits and stews in the sticky heat and imagines what he would do if Dean were somehow caught and shot while in the station. Would he hear the shots fired? How long would it take before he knew his brother was gone?

Absurdly, he wonders what he would do with the Impala. He can't imagine driving it; even turning the engine over would feel wrong, the idea that the car could drive on without the one person in the world who cared for it. It's too much to put on a car, but there it is.

Dean fetches up against the passenger side with a loud thump and Sam startles. He stares over as the door creaks open and he climbs into the car, his mouth already running in a low mutter:

“ – Fucking pain in the ass like you wouldn't believe. What're you staring at? _Drive_ , Sam.” Dean shifts on the seat like the passenger side is markedly more uncomfortable than the driver's, even though he must know from years riding shotgun with Dad that it's not. “Let you behind the wheel _once_ and you can't even do that – ”

“All right, quit your bitching,” Sam says, finally looking away and turning the key in the ignition.

* * *

“Maybe we got the mark on Walton wrong. Maybe it's not a witch. Maybe this isn't even a case?” says Sam after three days of frustrated research.

They've made little to no progress, and it's starting to take a toll, darkening every moment at its edges.

They’re pretty sure it’s not a spirit; no violent deaths connect back to the victims, and none of the deaths that happened in the airport over the years have led anywhere but  a dead-end when they followed up with them.

“That would be one reason it's going this bad,” says Dean. He tosses a crumpled paper into the overflowing bin in the corner of the room. Sam thinks he’s started using blank sheets, just so he has something to do. He certainly hasn’t been taking enough notes to account for all the trash. “Or, you know – it could definitely be a witch.”

Witch hunts are the worst — there’s a reason John never liked to let them in on them. Witches are too human, which makes for messy hunts, both literally (after the past days’ research, Sam never wants to think again about all the things one can apparently do with bodily fluids) and philosophically (Do you shoot the person? Or try to somehow turn them into the police?) And witches are always harder to catch, because they know to cover their tracks.

“We haven’t found any hexbags,” he reminds him.

Looking for them had been its own hassle. A series of time-consuming stakeouts, waiting for people to leave so they could sneak down the street and break into their homes. But they hadn’t found anything _._ And what’s more, no one, not _one_ person no matter how tenuously related, has been helpful.

Dean thinks even the librarian is trying to get in their way now; Sam called him paranoid, but privately he’s started to kind of wonder himself.

“I know, but – there’s something so personal about the attacks,” Dean says. “It feels like it a human.”

This outlook on humanity is typically cynical of Dean, but Sam can’t necessarily disagree. It was one thing to read about the incidents in the newspaper, where the picture presented is straightforward and couched in terms like _unfortunate accident_ , but reading the reports in the file and having seen the victims in person bring the perspective in close. The suffering almost radiates off the pages in front of him now, the cruelty unquestionable. Sam doesn't know if it would be better or worse at this point to find out it was all just random bouts of misfortune.

The woman who'd lost her fingers had played guitar in local coffee shops and bars since she was in high school. The kid with the amputated leg had been in a competitive gymnastics program. They didn't look too deep into the castration case; Dean had said, with a respectable attempt at a straight face, that they could probably guess what the guy had loved.

“I think we should try talking to Amanda Tranel again,” Sam says. “She’s the only person we have nothing on. But I don't know how we get in. Maybe we could ask the front desk to pass a message to her – the others' names. Something. See if she cracks then.”

Dean rubs his mouth, scowling at the table covered in research. He clearly doesn't want to say no, is practically jumping out of his skin after sitting around for three days. “Nothing in her statement or any of the others suggests the cops have connected the attacks.” His tone is vaguely disdainful, and Sam can practically hear him wanting to add _civilians_ , like it's a curse word. “I say we also try talking to the brother Mark. He was suspicious.”

“It was the way he tucked his shirt in, wasn't it.”

“Not natural on any man over the age of ten, Sammy.”

Sam grins tiredly and nods. By mutual unspoken agreement they shove away from the table for the night.

One of Dad's ironclad rules was no drinking on the case — it was perhaps the thing that stood between him and full-blown alcoholism – but they're both kind of jumping out their skin. They need to get out of this miserable cramped room and away from the pictures of little Jack Whitney's leg amputated at the knee.

There's a bar a few blocks away, an unassuming cinderblock of a building that someone forgot to put windows in to remind patrons of daylight, where the mid-shelf liquor behind the counter is covered in dust. All shots are poured into plastic medicine caps, and the beer only comes in tall boys.

Sam's fake ID, hastily recalled from the glove compartment, passes muster after ten fraught seconds. It’s been so long since something went right for them, he’s honestly kind of surprised.

They play a couple games of pool, until a few older locals edge into their space and start laying quarters down in claim, eyeing their shots with a skepticism that gradually turns into grudging respect. After their third game, Sam declines to play a challenge and settles back against the wall to watch Dean play for the table.

His brother moves around with the practiced ease of one who learned to play pool standing at his dad's hip, his eye for the angles intimately understood as the vantage point gradually grew from table-height to over six feet. Dean's not putting on any act tonight, isn't hustling, because despite the fact they need the money, they need the break more.

Stanford feels very far away just then, and despite the four beers he's had, Sam’s a little jittery. There's something out there in this neighborhood, something hurting people, and no one in here seems to be aware. Sam had allowed himself to forget this side of the life, the constant wearying knowledge that set him apart from everyone else in the room who wasn't his brother or dad.

“Christ, look at you,” Dean says after a while, relinquishing the table after a hard-fought loss and coming to lean against the wall next to him. “Remember when you used to be a happy drunk? What happened to that kid, I swear I saw him around just recently.”

Sam sets his half-full beer on the shelf running the length of the wall. He shrugs. “It's just this case.”

Dean grimaces and steals the beer. He takes a pull and comes away with a wet mouth. “Yeah. Sorry.”

Sam angles a look at him, reflexively suspicious. “Sorry?” he repeats.

“It's your summer break. I wouldn't have taken the case if I thought it would go this badly.”

The incredible thing is that he's sincere. And this is how irrevocably screwed up they both are, that they honestly thought Sam could come back for the summer and not have it blow up in their faces. To Dean, this was just one bad case out of dozens, more cause for professional embarrassment than an existential crisis.

Sam has one of those slow drunken realizations that feels outsized in significance. He thinks, maybe he's gotten it all wrong. There's no visiting home here. Sam had thought – had hoped, standing there in the Californian sunshine and looking at his brother, that he could do this. But every step forward he takes feels like one backwards from his future. It has nothing to do with the hunt or the life or even Dean, really – it's Sam. He doesn't have it in him to do anything by halves. Not hunting and not being here next to Dean.

Dean is watching him from a few inches away, eyes unreadable in the darkness of the bar.

“So how do you do it?” he asks him. “When a hunt ends bad. How do you deal?”

Dean doesn't shrug or try to pass the question off. He finishes Sam's beer and stares at the men playing pool, tapping his ring against the hollow metal of the can. Eventually he says, “That's what the road's for, I guess. There's always the next town. People are dying all over, Sam – you learn to look past it.”

Sam can barely believes it. Of all the things Dean could've tried passing off as the truth, this is the one he chooses? _What a load of shit_ , he thinks, watching him. _You've never looked past a death in your life._

 

They don’t get very drunk, and maybe that’s a tactical mistake, because instead they end up fighting.

They arrive back at the hotel near one in the morning, leaving behind the faded ashtray smell of the bar and greeting the faint mildew of their room. Sam is going to take so many showers when he gets back to California.

He slumps down at the end of his bed and contemplates the laces on his shoes.

Dean is quiet. “Look, Sam – you wanna go?”

“Go where?” he asks absently, yawning. In the ensuing silence, he keys in and looks sharply over.

Dean is standing next to the second bed, the one holding their open bags. He doesn't look happy, but he's positioned like he could start shoving spare items away at any moment. He's avoiding Sam's gaze.

Sam straightens up off the bed, shoes forgotten. He can't be reading this right. “You serious?”

Dean shrugs, faux casual, and casts his gaze over the room like he's already cataloging how long it might take to be gone, never mind it’s the middle of the night.

All Sam can think is that it's been almost a decade since he learned why his family traveled so much, and _never_ has he seen the back of a town without a corpse or a pile of ash as evidence of their presence. Winchesters don't abandon hunts. So he feels – he _feels_ kind of offended.

“What, you think I can't handle it?”

Dean transitions neatly to annoyed. “Fuck, Sam, are you kidding?”

He spreads his arms. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

“I'm trying to throw you a bone, genius.” His brother’s eyes are wide, disbelieving.

Memory of a dozen hunts fly through his mind, all of them with the same tone of voice coming down the phone line. Sam is eleven, twelve, fourteen and a liability. His father and brother could stalk land the span of which would make Lewis and Clark balk, and the only thing holding them back was Sam.

 _No_ . It's not like that anymore. Sam grew out of that resentment years ago. He found something else, something _better_ , something that belongs to him and him alone. He doesn’t need to play it this way.

He breathes out carefully, licks his lips. Clears his throat. “We can't leave when we still haven't solved the case.”

Dean plainly agrees, but he's got a stubborn pull to his mouth as he looks away. “It's your summer break.” It’s the second time this night he’s said it. Sam wonders if he’s waiting for him to disagree, to proclaim _Dean, I've decided I'm not going back to Stanford after all._

He's still talking: “...didn't agree to anything like this. I can always pass the case off to Dad.”

Sam doesn't catch himself in time – he scoffs at that. Dean's expression shuts down, but even that's not enough of a warning to stop him from saying, “That'd go real well, Dean. I'd love to hear that conversation.” As if it wouldn't turn into a twenty-minute lecture about responsibility and dedication and John asking why Dean couldn't stick it out.

“Sorry, Sam. Forgot we were pretending the man's dead.” He pairs the words with a mean smile.

Sam recoils. And then, because his anger has always obeyed the Newton's first law, he says, “He'll just be pissed at you, you know that. He'll wonder why you're hunting alone, why you didn't call him earlier – ”

“Not if I say I'm hunting with you.”

He freezes. “You wouldn't.”

“Christ, Sam. You know sometimes you make me feel like I'm cheating on someone?” He immediately grimaces and Sam pulls an identical face at the unfortunate phrasing.

Sam perseveres. “You can't tell him I'm hunting, Dean. I'm serious, it'll ruin everything.”

Nine months of hard work and building a future, book by book, lonely night by lonely fucking night, and it'll all just look like a short detour to Dad. He'll hear Sam's been hunting and take it as a confirmation that he'd been right all along. The thought is unbearable.

Now it’s Dean’s turn to throw his hand into the air and collapse back on a mattress. His next words are spoken muffled by a cage of his fingers pressing white-tipped over his face, “I never know what you fucking want.”

It was always like this, before. Dean pretending he didn't see or understand the basic facts of life with Dad or Sam's point of view. And he _was_ pretending. Dean's go-to strategy is ignore and suppress while holding on tight, and it doesn't matter that it never quite works because it's the only game in town.

He looks over at Dean’s folded figure, ready to say all this and more – but in the brief silence afforded by his liquored fatigue, he remembers that the only reason they got into this topic in the first place was because Dean was trying to offer him a way out of the case.

Sam feels his anger melt into weariness and he sighs, “I want – not to fight about this.”

Dean drops his hands and they share a long look, one that is direct and honest and incredibly uncomfortable.

Sam pushes on, “I know we ended up hunting – but that’s not why I went with you, Dean. It’s ...secondary. But if Dad got involved – ” he breaks off and shrugs. He doesn't need to tell Dean that the hunt is never secondary with John.

And Dean asks quietly, “Why did you come with me in California, Sam?”

He swallows. “I wanted to spend the summer with my brother.”

It's an answer that doesn't quite satisfy either of them, but that’s practically a Winchester speciality.

* * *

At some point that night, Sam tries to get up to unplug the air conditioner, which offers more noise than cool, but Dean’s sleep apparently isn’t liquored up enough to keep him under when he feels the mattress shift. Before Sam can even take his legs off the bed, a pair of strong arms are wrapping around him from behind and clamping down.

He sighs and unwillingly relaxes back against the hold; it’s either that or strain himself like a poorly-trained St. Bernard on a leash. “Dean, I’m _awake_.”

“Oh.” But he doesn’t let go. “Where are you going?”

 _To explain this to a therapist_. “Air conditioner.”

Dean makes a noise of nonverbal agreement and lets go of him. And then, because he clearly thinks Sam can’t do anything right, he rolls away and goes to unplug the noisy machine himself.

The room-shaking rumble dies off. Sam looks over in time to see Dean’s slim silhouette drag the window open, the old sill putting up a fight that squeaks and groans. A breeze carrying faint relief and the sounds of distant traffic from the airport starts to drift in the room.

Dean turns back to bed and climbs under the sheet. He wordlessly shifts to lie on his back, his left arm thrown wide and welcoming Sam to slide close and sling his own arm over his midsection. They both sigh and dig their heads down into their pillows.

A second later there’s two feet between them, both having sprang backwards in a violently alert scramble. They stare at each other in the dim, pre-dawn light.

“... _Awkward_ ,” Dean says after another second, tone reaching for a shaky laugh.

Sam glares and turns his back, making sure he’s as close to the other side of the bed as he can get without falling off. “This is what happens when you implement mandatory cuddling, Dean.”

“Mandatory — ” he breaks off with an outraged scoff.

Sam does his best to deliberately relax the lines of his body, acutely aware of his jumping pulse and heated face. “I invite you to start sleeping in the second bed at any time.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just go back to sleep, bitch.”

And there’s something Sam's supposed to say back, but he’s too mortified to speak again, sure that his voice will give something away. Dean’s parting words are left to linger and grow stale in the air, and they both have to pretend they don’t notice.

Sam sleeps badly, too paranoid to fully let go of consciousness. When the freeway traffic picks up and heralds the arrival of morning, he’s almost grateful to throw the towel in and get up. He sits up and glances over his shoulder; Dean’s just blinking awake, his eyes blurred with poor sleep and little bloodshot.

“You hungover at all?” he asks Sam, who considers the question and ultimately shakes his head. Dean sits up. “Ah, the gifts of youth.”

“Ah, the gifts of not drinking most days of the week,” he says, and is relieved that the words come out dry and completely normal.

“Life is too short for any kind of abstinence, Sam.”

He snorts. “It’ll be shorter yet with that kind of attitude.”

Dean shrugs, unimpressed, and makes a beeline for the bathroom. He’s careless with the door, leaves it hanging open halfway as he pisses and starts the shower. Sam stares at the slice of visible linoleum for a few minutes before forcing himself to get up and fetch the coffee.

* * *

As if some higher power has been monitoring their progress on the case and grown impatient (and Sam wouldn’t put it past John to find a way, even in ignorance and across one thousand miles), things start moving before they’ve even finished breakfast.

They’re in a Country Kitchen a freeway exit down from their hotel. Dean’s still working on a stack of pancakes; Sam is down to picking over the remnants of his Denver, conscientiously forking up stray onions and peppers. He needs to get what few vegetables he can; he's missing the dining hall something fierce.

His mobile phone buzzes with a text from a jail custodian he'd paid a couple days ago; Amanda Tranel has posted bail. He looks up to tell Dean and finds him mulling over his own phone.

Dean types something before snapping it shut and tossing it down on the diner table. He announces, “Alice Sobol’s being released from the hospital today. They’re preparing her paperwork.” He pauses. “She’s probably dictating it, right?”

Sam ignores that last. “How do you know?”

Dean shrugs and shovels several geologic ages of sticky pancake into his mouth. “Chatted up one of the nurses. Got her number.” He gives Sam a significant look. “And you said in Ypsilanti that my flirting was a distraction.”

In Ypsilanti, his flirting _had_ been a distraction. Sam was distracted. He’d been so busy trying not to notice if Dean was striking out for the night that he nearly missed that the bus boy was a banshee. But never mind all that.

He tells Dean about Tranel’s bail and then, surreptitiously taking a breath, he casually suggests they split up to question the two women. Last night’s argument and subsequent weirdness in the dark is still at the forefront of his thoughts; some space will do Sam good. And, more importantly — “With the way things have been going for us, I don’t think we should risk missing a chance to talk to them. Amanda’s staying put unless she decides to skip bail, but we don’t know what Alice will do.”

He has more arguments lined up, but to his complete surprise, Dean only suck on his lower lip and slowly nods.

“Yeah. You’re right, let’s do that.”

Sam stops. “Really?” He narrows his eyes. “ _Why_?”

He raises his eyebrows, nonplussed. “It was your idea.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t expect — I mean. All right.” Sam closes his laptop and nods across the booth. “Good.”

Now it's Dean's turn to narrow his eyes. “Don’t get too excited, Sammy. You’re stuck taking public transport. And I want a call from you right before and right after you talk to her. You got that?”

He waves him off, already reaching for his notebook. “You need Alice’s address or do you already have it?”

Dean doesn’t react — as in, deliberately makes no indication that he’s heard — just finishes chewing his last mouthful of pancake. Then he slides the plate out of the way and starts digging for his wallet.

Sam watches him toss three crumpled fives down on the table. One of them lands in a spillover of syrup. He’s still looking at it when Dean says:

“I’m not going to see Alice. You are.” He jerks his head up and finds him smiling grimly. Dean says, “Let’s take this argument out to the car. Don’t want to ruin breakfast for all these nice folk.”

So they take the argument out to the car. Dean leans against his door and folds his arms, expression implacable. He starts out calm and measured, using a tone Sam recognizes instantly from a thousand interventions in his fights with Dad. Tactical error; that tone gets Sam’s back up immediately from sheer association. Sam can't stand being _managed_.

“Look, Sam, we don’t know how dangerous Amanda is — she refused to even see us before.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” he says. “I mean, I wouldn't talk to us.”

Dean shoots him an offended look, like Sam’s betrayed him, _him_ , his own _brother_. “Why the hell not?”

“What, talk to a pair of complete strangers while my case is still pending? From that perspective, there's not much good it could do but a whole lot of bad.”

“Check out My Cousin Vinny over here,” Dean mutters to himself, looking away and rubbing his face. “Okay, but what about her brother? She wouldn't let him visit either.”

“Maybe because her brother,” says Sam, “is a fucking jerk. And anyway, if you think she’s so dangerous, why do you get to go see her alone?” he demands. He watches Dean disbelievingly mouth _get to_ and feels his patience fray further.

“Because I’m older, that’s why.”

“Dean, I’m serious.”

“Oh, I know you are.” He drops his arms and steps forward from the car. Sam holds his ground, lets his brother get as close he wants. “I _get to_ go there alone, Sam, because this is what I do. Unlike some of us around here, I didn’t take a gap year.”

“A _gap year_ — ”

“I’ve been hunting nonstop since last August. That means I can handle myself a hell of a lot better than you, which means I’ll be the one to go check on the maybe-murdering witch.”

“You can handle yourself,” Sam says. And at Dean’s _obviously_ nod, he says, “You mean like you handled yourself in Kentucky.”

For his trouble, he gets a roll of the eyes, his brother turning away and dismissing him.

“I’m not letting you go there by yourself, Dean. We’ll go together or not at all.”

But maybe Dean’s right and Sam is rusty or unprepared in some fundamental way. He’s been at the center of his brother’s attention since they joined up in California, and he’s somehow gotten used to that, has forgotten that Dean’s favorite punctuating response to any argument is to walk away.

He spends precious too-many seconds standing there dumbly watching as Dean gets behind the wheel of the Impala, doesn’t startle into action and lunge for the passenger side until it’s too late, and the car is rumbling to life and driving away, leaving him standing in the parking lot of the Country Kitchen like a ditched hookup on the morning after.

* * *

A little later he is on an NJ Transit bus, trying awkwardly to get actionable information out of a traumatized young woman in between the wheezing and jostling of every stop along the hospital route.

The disruptive setting is compounded by his distraction over Dean and his relative inexperience – he has interviewed people by himself before, but it's not something he's done very often. And never with one of the primary victims.

But for some reason – maybe because she's been forced out of the hospital early by her insurance, or because she's heading home on a bus, alone, her pass pinned loosely to the bandage on her fingerless hands – _for some reason_ , Alice Sobol actually chooses to talk to him.

They're sitting near the back, Alice perched stiffly on an inside seat, her shoulders sloped but not defeated, and Sam turning around from the row right in front of her.

He is wary of getting too close and giving any impression of looming. And Alice does look scared, but he doesn't think it's of him. She doesn't speak directly to him, keeps her gaze on the passing street. Her voice is quiet in an attempt to sound calm and measured, but Sam's spent enough of his life faking being all right to know another pretender when he hears her.

“And then the guitar case slammed shut and – somehow. This.” She doesn't move to indicate her hands, and Sam doesn't so much as glance at them, wanting his eyes to be on her face should she choose to glance over. She doesn't.

“What did the police say?” Sam asks, like he didn't know what the cops thought backwards and forwards by now.

“Nothing worthwhile.” And there – she doesn't turn her head but her eyes flick over to him. He doesn't have to try very hard to look sympathetic. She says abruptly, “It was an accident.”

And he says, “Okay.”

She takes that in for a moment, returning her pale gaze to the scenery out the window. With her head turned, he can just see the edges of the sigil on the back of her neck, peeking under the curl of her short hair.

It's hard not to show the way it affects him. It wasn't an accident. None of them were.

Sam debates letting the moment breathe a little, but he's all too aware that in the time it took him to walk the half-mile from the diner to the nearest bus stop, his brother should have arrived at Amanda Tranel’s apartment and that by the time he arrived at the hospital, Dean could have been — disarmed, literally, or decapitated. Dean could be dead right now, while Sam sits on this unfortunate brown fabric seat surrounded by ads for pregnancy testing and gambling addiction help.

“Alice, the thing is – I know it wasn't an accident,” he tells her quietly, matching her determinedly detached tone with one of his own, “in the way that what happened to the Whitneys' kid wasn't an accident. Or Mike Grillo or Gary Walton.” His eyes pick up the tightening of her shoulders at the last name, the flinch of the mouth. But he doesn't address that, not yet. “I know it's not an accident, because I've seen this kind of thing before.”

A short burst of laughter, hastily dragged under by a riptide of helplessness. “ _No one_ has seen this kind of thing before.”

“When I was thirteen, a man in Wabasha, Minnesota died of smoke inhalation on a sidewalk.”

She looks directly at him for the first time, confused.

He shrugs slightly. “There was no fire anywhere in the vicinity. And there weren't any burns on his face. But the coroner's report was adamant that the scarring in his lungs was identical to that of a fire victim.”

She shakes her head. “What are you saying?”

He lowers his voice. “I'm saying I've seen this kind of thing before. What happened to you – it wasn't natural. I think you know that. And I think you're scared that it isn't over.”

If she had fingers to twist together, to fumble and fret at the loose threads of her sleeves, maybe she'd do that. But her bandaged hands just lay stationary in her lap like heavy parcels. She looks down at them.

“I'd wondered about – why my fingers? You know?” Her gaze meanders around the bus, over Sam, and lands back at her lap. “Of everything to take, why my fingers.”

Sam begins to say, “Your guitar – ” but she cuts him off with a quick shake of the head.

“No. I mean – yes. But I don't think it's that. I had a lot of time to think, especially after I heard about Gary. And at the time, I thought it had to be the meds or the grief talking. But now I'm not so sure.” Her eyes meet his again, brilliant with tears and anger. “I think Amanda just wanted to make sure I could never touch him again.”

 

Sam gets off at the next stop. He calls Dean three times, leaves three increasingly demented voicemails, and then steals a car.

_What about Mike Grillo?_

_Mike? They dated a few years ago. Nice guy but doesn't exactly believe in monogamy._

When you’re really angry at someone – which in Sam's case only means Dad or Dean because no one else has ever gotten close enough to really piss him off – your mind immediately starts flipping through its catalog and offering up similar results to see if they’ll also be a hit. So Sam thinks back to the past couple of fights they’ve had. Dean’s insistent offers to abandon the hunt, and now, the bull-headed rush to handle it alone. He thinks about this whole stupid road trip and how blindly, foolishly, sickeningly optimistic they had been to think it could work.

_And what about the Whitneys? Why would Amanda go after a kid like that?_

_They all used to be friends, that's all I know._

It takes him twenty minutes to get over to the neighborhood where Amanda Tranel lives, only to find it's still covered in police tape and that no one is there. He's staring at it helplessly, blood draining from his face, when he gets the text from Dean asking him what he wants on his pizza.

 

“Look,” Dean says as Sam comes through the door of the hotel room, “I'm sorry. All right?” He sounds as close to placating as Dean gets, which is to say – guilty and half-exasperated with Sam about it.

He only barely resists slamming the door. He _doesn't_ resist stalking across the room and getting up into Dean's face, close enough that neither of them can avoid the new height difference. Dean, of course, doesn't move back, because that would be admitting something.

He bites the words out: “What the hell, Dean?”

“My cell phone died,” he says defensively, pointing at the object in question. “I'm still not used to the damn thing, I always forget it runs down a battery worse than my walkman.”

“I thought – ” Sam cuts himself off and shakes his head. No point in causing a scene, even if Dean's the only person here to witness it. Especially if Dean's the only person here to witness it. He counts to five and lets it go. When he turns back to his brother, Dean's watching him with his eyebrows faintly raised.

“I take it you learned something?” he asks Sam. “I sure as hell hope you did, otherwise you're being kind of a drama queen _and_ we're back to square one.”

Sam ignores everything but the last part. “You don't know where Amanda Tranel is?”

“I'm hoping she's staying with her brother, didn't get a chance to check. If she's not, she could be in any house or hotel in the county.” Dean grimaces. “I guess we could break into the station again, peek at the release paperwork.”

“Well, we're going to have to do something, because Alice Sobol thinks she did it.”

He tells him everything, and Dean nods after. If he had any feeling about this turning out to be a hunt after all, he keeps them to himself.

“So – pizza and stakeout sound like a nice date night to you?”

“You take me to the nicest places,” Sam tells him, and they both pretend they don't feel anything weird in the air between them.

A couple hours later, the car smells faintly of grease and under-seasoned tomato sauce. The pizza is mostly demolished, the leftovers gone cold, and no one has gone in or out of Mark Tranel's duplex.

Conversation dried up about half an hour ago, and Dean's been drifting in and out of a doze ever since. Sam's compromised with himself: he's going to let Dean sleep, because he probably needs it and Sam's a good brother no matter what Dean says, but he's also going to use it against him in some future argument, because Sam's a smart brother (no matter what Dean says).

Despite the closed-in heat of the afternoon, Sam has no trouble staying awake. He took some of the caffeine pills that Dean always has rattling around in the glove compartment, for times when he wants to be particularly reckless crossing the country at Dad's command.

The sun crawls across the sky. The shadows of the mailboxes and trees reach for the street. Sam looks down the line of modest houses and thinks about the lives that go on inside. It's a Sunday. Maybe people are circling the kitchen table like clockwork vultures, bodies and minds trained along the reassuring beats of a routine.

He wonders, a little abruptly, what his friends are doing right now. Becca and Zach took summer internships at home, so they might be having lunch with their parents. Brady's still in Europe for another couple weeks; he's probably out partying somewhere. Sam tries to picture any of them here now, hanging in the backseat of his big brother's car, and fails comprehensively. Worse, he tries to picture himself where they are, and finds the image bobbing out of reach as if on a brisk current.

Beautiful Sunday afternoon in the summer, and he can't picture anything else but sitting shotgun on a stakeout.

Impatient with himself, Sam switches on the radio. Metallica blares out at a skin-jumping volume, and he flinches, quickly twists the volume down. But it's too late – Dean's awake again.

His his slit eyes open. “Time is it?”

“Half past four.”

Dean makes a face but doesn't say anything more, just stretches and yawns. He nods across the street. “Anything?”

“Woulda woke you if there was.”

They both contemplate the unassuming duplex.

“Why do you think she did it?” Sam asks. At Dean's nonplussed look, he clarifies, “I mean – petty grudges, revenge, whatever – I get that part. But why the thaumaturgy?”

Dean lifts one shoulder, disinterested. “Some people don't like an old-fashioned hands-on maiming, I guess,” is all he offers, typically incurious.

There was a time just after Sam found out about all of it – the truth of his mom's death, his dad's mission – where he wanted to know the _why_ of everything. Why his mom died, of course, but also why that shifter in Toledo killed its neighbors. Why did God allow the spirit of that little girl to remain and fester, when she had done nothing wrong in life?

 _Why_ wearied the adults around him, Caleb and Pastor Jim and Uncle Bobby. _Why_ drove his dad up the wall. John tried offering explanations but quickly lost patience with the uniquely open-ended world of a child's logic and eventually just started ignoring the question.

Sam tries to remember how Dean dealt with his constant questions. He can summon up the image of that serious boy he remembers from when he was really young, before Dean grew old enough to find hobbies and a personality better suited for coping with the life. Mainly he remembers Dean's puzzlement with him. Like now that Sam knew the truth about their lives he shouldn't need any further explanation or coddling; couldn't Sam see it? This is just the way the world _is._

Dean never needs much of the _why_ of a case, not if it isn't relevant to the _who_ , _what_ , and _how-_ do-we-kill-it. It's probably the most irritating thing about him, that he's willing to throw his life away over and over, for people he doesn't even want to know anything about.

“Heads up,” Dean says just then, interrupting Sam's thoughts. “Looks like someone's in a hurry.”

Across the street, Mark Tranel is slamming out his door and not even pausing to lock up before jogging across the small lawn to his Chevy Cav.

“Do we follow him or check the house?” says Sam, but he knows his brother and so his hands are already reaching for the seat belt.

“Small place, shouldn't take long to scope out,” Dean says, and they go, crossing the small lawn at a casual pace, like they belong there, like no one should be suspicious as they follow the line of the vinyl siding like a direction arrow and go to the back of the house.

Being the height of summer, breaking in requires nothing more than removing the screen on a window. They move silently in case Amanda or another person is still inside, but by the time they hit the peeling linoleum of the back laundry room, it's clear they are alone in the house.

They split up and search the rooms, and a distracting pain takes up occupancy in Sam's head. He ignores it, thinking he's probably not drank enough water in the past day, and keeps going.

He always hated this part of the hunt. For many years this was the closest he ever got to seeing the trappings of a normal family – passing framed pictures of smiling parents and kids on his way to rifling through their junk, in search of whatever supernatural cancer has appeared in their lives.

There are two bedrooms. The first is some kind of guest room, empty except for a thrown-open suitcase full of women's clothing. So Amanda _is_ staying here, he thinks.

The second has an altar and spellbook.

“Dean,” he calls, his voice trying to compromise between a whisper and a shout and getting the utility of neither. “ _Dean_ , come here – ”

“What, Jesus – ah.” Dean takes in the altar. “So, Mark, huh. A witch with a dick. A witch who _is_ a dick, letting his sister take the fall like that.”

Like so many others, Amanda Tranel has been doomed not by the company she keeps but by her own flesh and blood.

Sam steps closer, shaking off Dean's immediately restraining hand impatiently – he knows not to touch anything, he's not a _kid._ He studies the spellbook. “I think I was right about the thaumaturgy,” he says over his shoulder, after a moment.

“Congratulations, Sam. Does it say anything about what it does or how to stop him?”

An edge to his voice now: “I don't know. Maybe try giving me a little longer than _ten seconds_ and I can figure it out – ”

“We don't have – ” And then they both stop, because a car door just slammed outside. Two voices are audible from the front of the house, yelling at each other.

Without speaking, Sam and Dean exit the bedroom and retrace their steps to the laundry room and its open window. They slip out onto the cracked concrete of the walkway, refit the screen into place, and steal back to the Impala.

 

They go back to the hotel and grab their extra guns and a few knives for back-up. Sam watches a small arsenal disappear on Dean's body and has to blink when the he picks up the last one and offers it to Sam. It's a wickedly curved knife he remembers Caleb giving Dean for his fourteenth birthday (He said it was a relic from when vampires were still around, and Dean had practically ignited with the power of his excitement).

Sam doesn't know where to put it, isn't particularly eager to tuck a double-ended blade into the waistband of his jeans, so he tucks it into his backpack along with his notes on thaumaturges. And then they're ready to go finish this hunt.

“If we get done early enough, we should go down to the boardwalk,” Dean says. “No reason not to finally enjoy the city. We can see the sights, grab a few beers – you're buying, right?”

Sam doesn't bother pointing out that he has no money. By the time they get to any hypothetical bar, Dean will be putting dollars on the bar and buying Sam shots like he's his hot date. This late on a hot afternoon, with the end of this miserable hunt in sight, Sam thinks it even sounds like a good time.

They set back out on streets gilded by the sunset, armed to the teeth and somehow, after all this time, still unprepared.

* * *

Mark had gone out to fetch Amanda, who, it turns out, is very drunk.

They can hear her trying to talk as soon as they approach the window to the laundry room, and Sam feels some discomfiting horror in her complete helplessness, her slowed faculties, her inability to follow Mark's words.

“You've always been like this. You're just like Mom.”

They climb back in through the window, wincing at the rattle of the screen being removed and how every creak in the floorboards suddenly sounds ten times louder than they had half an hour previous. But from the moment they are in, they can hear Amanda sobbing – gigantic hiccuping, inconsolable sobs, the type that made for excellent cover when one is creeping up on someone.

“Goddamn it, Amanda, would you fucking stop? Can't you see – I did it _for you_.”

“Oh – oh, _yes_ , of _course_ ,” she moans out, voice choking with her tears and maybe a nascent, disbelieving rage. “You k-killed Gary. _For me_ . How c-can I ever. _Ever_ thank you?”

Sam and Dean pause in the hallway for a swift, silent conversation.

 _Look at spellbook?_ offers Sam. That the hexes were done on behalf of someone might be relevant – he'd like to read some more.

Dean shakes his head. He adjusts the grip on his gun, makes a face, and shrugs: _Let's just get this over with._

“He was a cheating shitstain. A loser, just like every other guy you've ever dated. You're lucky I'm even around to look out for you.”

Sam's mouth curls.

“I wish you were dead,” Amanda says hollowly. Her voice has gone even more indistinct, like she can barely get the words out.

There's a brief pause, and then they hear Mark, tone changed: “You really shouldn't talk to me like that anymore.”

They don't even need to look at each other. They both recognize a cue when they hear one.

Dean enters the living room first, wheeling around the corner with his back to the wall and his gun up and cocked helpfully.

“Now why would that be?” he asks.

Amanda's curled up in an armchair, hair splayed messily over her face and hands clutching her midsection like she's going to be sick any moment. Mark's standing over her but whirls around at Dean's question.

Then Sam comes in on the other side of the room, splitting Mark's attention. He has his own gun up – it doesn't shake, he's too well-trained for that, but something not unlike fear pulls at his stomach. He's never had to shoot a human before. He wonders, too late, if God might count this as murder.

Amanda cringes back into her seat, eyes wide and terrified. She has no idea what is going on. “Oh my god, oh my god – ”

“What the _fuck_ ,” Mark shouts. And for a split second, despite everything, Sam is sure that they somehow got it all wrong, that they've broken into a civilian's house and are about to have the cops called on them.

But Mark's temper has been primed for hours, and he doesn't keep them in suspense for long.

He faces them, planting his feet. Cocks his head and a pressure starts to build in the room. Sam's ears pop, and somewhere beneath the muddle, he swears he can hear someone saying _I don't want to, we don't want to, no no no –_

“You guys. It told me someone was sniffing around,” Mark says, voice going for cocky but only hitting petulant.

“It?” Sam says sharply.

Dean's already dispensed with the mystery and is focusing on the practicalities: “Sam, he's got something on a leash. We need to destroy the – ”

“On it.” He's already moving, thinking: toss the altar, then find the binding token – it could be an amulet or some kind of stone.

“No, no – I don't think so,” Mark says and points at him.

Sam's been thrown by spirits before. He's familiar with the sickening sense of weightlessness – it's not like being blown by wind or any external force, so much as he himself is being changed, somehow unbound from the earth. This is like that; he flies back into the wall, feels his shoulder blades crack the glass of a framed poster. Collapses to the ground.

“Sam!” Dean gets two shots off before he grunts and is thrown back by the same power. Amanda screams, whether at the gunshots or the aerial display, Sam can't know.

He tries to get up, one hand pushing up while the other gropes for his gun, but it's not there, it's not –

He sees it lying over near the armchair at the same time Amanda does. Even with her drink-dulled reflexes, there's no way he thinks he reaches it before her – and he's right. He doesn't.

Dean's over against the other wall, talking fast, trying to keep Mark's attention on him. Sam thinks tensely that John should've trained them in hostage negotiation. He wants to shout at Dean, _this is why we research motive!_ but his voice is in a bunker somewhere, praying that they get out of this clusterfuck alive.

“Mark. Listen, man. Your neighbors probably heard those gunshots, they've probably already called the police. One person's already dead, you can stop now before this gets any worse.”

“Any worse? From here, it's still looking fine. They don't have shit on Amanda, and they sure as hell don't any shit on me. Who's to say I don't just take care of you guys and call it a day?” He sweeps the two of them with a glance. “Because I get the feeling you kids aren't exactly _official_ law enforcement.”

Mark's still got his hand up against his brother, and all Sam can see for a moment is Alice Sobol's bandaged stumps and, bizarrely, the awkward pin of her bus pass.

“Others will come for you, if they haven't picked up on the pattern already,” Sam says, a little desperate, trying to draw his attention.

But Dean's not cooperating with that plan. “Yeah, if my kid brother can do it, you don't think someone else will piece it together?”

“You're both full of it. I think all I'm up against is what's right in front of me – a pair of punk-ass kids thought they would role play the Scooby gang.” Sam's head is pounding, that same voice from before screaming its denial now, even as Mark lifts his hand again. “I think we're done here.”

“Yeah,” Amanda says, sitting up with Sam's gun wavering badly in her hand. “We are.”

She shoots her brother in the back; it's only the extreme close range that saves Dean from a bullet gone wide. Mark doesn't even have time to face her one last time – he falls and is gone. The banked pressure lifts immediately.

Dean looks from the body, lying facedown in a growing pool of blood, to Sam. “You okay?”

Sam can only nod shakily. He glances over at Amanda. A second later, he shouts and makes a desperate lunge for her and the gun turned awkwardly around in her hand, but he's too late and the deed is done.

The second gunshot somehow sounds louder than the first.

Sam lands on all fours by her body, grabbing his gun away like it'll do any good now. He turns and looks up at Dean. They stare at each other, grim and shocky.

Dean licks his lips and croaks, “We gotta get out of here. The cops.”

He can only nod and let his brother pull him up to standing.

Dean pulls away and says, “I'm – going to check Mark for a token. Amulet. Something.”

“I'll destroy the altar,” Sam says.

It's only when he is standing in Mark's bedroom that he realizes they're not quite alone in the house yet. He's staring down at the altar and spellbook, lighter in hand.

It begins as a whisper in his mind, sidling up solicitous and so damningly compassionate it doesn't trip any of his alarms. That's what he'll remember much later: the magic doesn't feel evil; it feels _sincere._ It asks him to destroy the altar and, since that is what he had intended to do, he complies.

The flames take a moment to catch and when they do, the effect is instantaneous; the headache that has been plaguing him since he stepped foot in the house suddenly lifts.

Shaking his head as if to check for residual pain, he goes back out into the other room. He stands in the doorway, watching.

Dean's not paying attention to him. He's kneeling over the man's body, one hand still holding his gun at the ready in case he'll need it. But he won't, Sam knows. Mark is dead, the stolen thaumaturge released. There's no better proof of this than his sister's crumpled body.

He's only ten feet away, but he's so detached it feels farther. He floats, untethered, and listens as the magic speaks without words, telling him it's grateful, and that it knows him; it can take his pain; it can fix him.

He watches Dean move strong, capable hands along the body, checking all the pockets. His half-averted face is intent, and he doesn't look out of place in the slightest, just resigned, kneeling there beside two bloody bodies. It makes Sam's throat close up.

Dean says something, and looks over his shoulder up at Sam. There's open inquiry across his face, and his eyes are very clear. Sam lets a second pass, looking back at him and feeling the weight of his longing pressing in from all corners.

The whispers fall away, hiding under his brother's attention, and Sam steps forward to help deal with the remains of the other monster in the room.

* * *

They leave the way they came in and double-time it to the car. They're barely two blocks away when they hear the first of the converging police sirens.

“They'll probably close the case,” says Dean, like that's even in the realm of their concerns at this point. “They'll think – murder-suicide.”

“That's what it was,” Sam says flatly. He's looking out the window, at his own reflection in the passenger side mirror. He thinks distantly that there's something odd about the look in his eyes.

Dean makes a noise, dissatisfied. “Yeah, but – they'll think Amanda killed Gary Walton. Everyone she knew will think she did it.”

Sam's thinking about family and the transference of sin, how God might judge Amanda's culpability in the actions of Mark. They didn't do any good here, he knows. It's almost a marvel. All that effort and anxiety, and they didn't do any good at all. And now Sam's going to have to ride out into the sunset, pretending to not notice how Dean is bothered by it all but won't say as much.

He looks at his reflection and doesn't say anything more to his brother.

 

They wash up and check out, neither willing to spend another night in the dump by the airport. They drive along through the weedier edges of the city, past squat prefab homes and crab grass meadow lots.

The radio's on, working to take up double the space of the car with half the volume, the usual triumphant soundtrack to their lives temporarily relegated to its place of honor beneath the passenger seat. After the commercial break, it switches over to Springsteen, the one song in his catalog that this city must be sick to death of hearing, because God knows Sam is sick of winners and losers and always knowing which side of the line he'll fall on if he stays in this life.

“One for the road?” Dean asks, still trying with all his might to move past the hunt.

A warm comfort blankets Sam's shoulders, and it feels like when his dad used to give him bear hugs when he was very little and had only the unshakeable security and knowledge of being loved – that's what it feels like when the thaumaturge speaks to Sam again.

It's still there. It followed them out of that house with the dead siblings like a stray dog might follow a friendly stranger who'd offered it food.

 _You can have a different life and still be his brother,_ he is told, and he feels the truth of it in his chest.

“Uh, Sam?”

He imagines a life where he doesn't have this sick, twisted feeling inside him, one where he can meet up with his brother and not feel drawn back to a life by his side, won't have to work at continually training his gaze past his face. Hurting Dean with this back-and-forth pull, forever bound and never free.

“Sam?”

“Not really feeling it,” he says to Dean. “Think I just need to get some sleep.”

He averts his gaze, looks again out the window, like he might be able to divine some kind of wisdom from a sky murky with light pollution.

In a few days he's going to have to remind Dean that he needs to return to Stanford. He knows every moment between then and now will feel like he's making the old hard decision all over again. He thinks of Dean standing on the sun-filled lawn at Stanford, smiling at him. He thinks of him standing on a darkened street corner a year ago with his face collapsing into disbelieving panic, the one time he's ever seen his brother really lose control.

He swallows and glances over. Dean is watching the road with an absent frown and Sam's eyes trace his profile like it's the last time he'll ever see it.

 _Yes_ , he thinks, viciously decisive. _Yes, do it._

And this is the part he won't forgive himself for later, if he remembers it: it feels _good_.

 

 

 

 **Part II: Holding On**  
_Winter '07_

 

Atlantic City has seen better days. But then, so has Sam.

He's tender on his ankle ( _not_ limping, never mind what Dean says) and quietly worried this sprain is more of a fracture. These past few months have been a steady sequence of stupid injuries, him off his game and distracted, days blurring into a relentless shake out of miles, painkillers and melting ice bags that leave the tips of his fingers numb.

Dean, of course, isn't helping much.

Sam's been injured enough times in his life that he can automatically categorize and rate each new injury on a spectrum. A _one_ is maybe a shiner, which will earn him a cold soda from the motel vending machine and a wisecrack about his face. A ten, though, something like a bullet wound that's gone septic? That equals forced bed rest while Dean keeps watch from two feet away, like an infection is something he can stalk and kill with his .45.

A non-permanent ankle injury would ordinarily be very middling, but of course the spectrum is weighted to account for Dean. Even a score of five means Sam gets snapped at and ushered around like he's going to collapse any minute. It's been like this since Dad died.

Dean wants to get the ankle X-rayed. Sam thinks stepping foot into any kind of hospital so soon after their last brush with Henriksen is insanely reckless and hadn't moderated his wording as he explained this to him. This kicked off a whole _thing_ and they've been arguing since they crossed the New Jersey state line.

Sam is about ready to amputate the foot, so long as it means they can stop snapping at each other about it.

Dean throws the Impala in park and squints forward out the windshield at nothing in particular. His fingers are tapping an even rhythm on the steering wheel. Sam has zoned out completely and is idly watching them without thinking anything at all.

“How big is an X-ray machine anyway? Maybe we could steal one.”

It takes a second for Sam to register the words. Then he sets his head back against the window and sighs. “We're not stealing an X-ray machine, Dean.”

Dean tips his head. “It'd be useful to have around. We could stash it at Bobby's, never have to mess with hospitals again.”

Sam's not even going to touch that one. “Look, after the case, I'll start looking around for a free clinic or something. Somewhere we can go where they won't demand too much paperwork.”

It's not ideal, going into a new case with a bum ankle, but people might be dying – Bobby said this hunt was time-sensitive.

This plan is clearly less satisfying to Dean than stealing an X-ray machine, but miracle of miracles, he seems to be as over fighting about it as Sam. He grunts his acknowledgement and goes to check in to the Boardwalk Motel.

Through tired, half-lidded eyes, Sam watches him round the car. He makes it four steps before he turns around and stabs a finger back at him. _Don't move,_ he's saying – threatening, really – and in response Sam just wearily lifts his hand and makes a rude gesture back at him.

(His ice melted three hours ago and his ankle is throbbing pretty strongly; contrary to what Dean likes to bitch, he doesn't _actually_ wish to aggravate the injury anymore than he has to.)

As he waits, he scrolls through his inbox.

What had once been a healthy, if highly eclectic, ecology of personal emails, newsletters, and hunting correspondence is now distinctly lacking the first. Messages tapered off all through last year, but they stopped completely after Milwaukee. Even Becky hasn't reached out, though Sam harbors a quiet belief that she is abstaining out of loyalty; she would have surely been questioned by the FBI.

Perhaps the most disturbing part about the change is how little Sam has actively minded. With everything else going on – Dad dying, psychic armies, demonic plans (just to name a few highlights from his social calendar) – his old dreams and plans have taken on an unreal quality, like the answer you get when you ask a child what they want to be when they grow up.

That's probably depressing. Even _Dean_ would think it's depressing, not that that's exactly a stretch for him nowadays.

He's been on the road with Dean for over a year and a half now. In some ways it feels like they've never been closer, but in others it's like Dean's more alien every day. Sam's trapped on this strange binary path, his brother always simultaneously knowable and unknowable. They fit together like they were built that way but damned if Sam understands for what purpose.

A key card slaps against the window next to his head, jerking him out of his thoughts. He had his head down as if he was still looking at his phone, but really he's just been staring into space.

He opens the door quick but Dean jumps back before it can catch him in the groin.

Dean scowls at him. “What, you never want to be an uncle?”

“Bet I'd be doing the human race a favor.” Sam levers himself up out of the seat and walks around to the trunk.

Dean shakes his head and goes to open it. “Would you stop hopping around like Tiny Tim without his crutch, it's just sad, man.”

“I'm not _hopping_ ,” Sam grits out. He wishes he _had_ a crutch. He could beat Dean with it.

“Look, why don't you just get settled in the room, read up on the case – I'll make a supply run.”

“Finally, a good idea.” Sam turns to start towards the room, key card in hand. Five steps away, he remembers and says over his shoulder, “And buy some new phones. It's time to switch up again.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Dean waves him off and climbs into the Impala.

They'd promised Bobby and Ellen that they wouldn't keep their landlines loaded, just in case they got picked up by the feds. Sam knew it was only a precaution, and that it didn't mean their calls weren't welcome, but he got the feeling that Dean took it as one more door closing on their faces.

He gets some ice from the machine near the outside stairwell a few doors down before going into their room. There's not much he can do besides take a couple more of the pills Dean had shoved at him earlier in the day and settle down to start documenting what they knew for the case in the back of the journal.

Bobby had been the one to find it; an old contact in the area reached out on behalf of another friend, a civilian who'd come across something that definitely looked like a hunt. But he was elbow deep in something messy and complicated, so he punted it to Sam and Dean.

It's probably someone selling cursed objects in New Jersey, which sounds like a promising distraction from all their other problems, so they go. They need the hunt and never mind Sam's ankle.

They actually have a second room waiting for them at some swank casino hotel downtown on the actual boardwalk, courtesy of Bobby's contact. Neither Sam nor Dean are feeling up to trusting anyone these days and agreed that it'd better to maintain a second base. Hence: the current shithole.

He flips through the bookmarks on his laptop and neatly enters the pertinent details into the journal as the sun begins its early descent across the sky and the shadows crawl across the walls of the room.

He's squinting at a map of the city when Dean returns.

“Hey,” he says without looking over.

“Here: dinner,” he says, tossing a grease-spotted paper bag towards Sam before flopping back on one of the beds. He groans. “This better be an open-and-shut deal. After this we seriously need to take a breather.”

“I don't think we have that kind of luxury,” says Sam.

“It's not _luxury_ , Sam, it's being smart. The freaking feds are after us, you're injured, I'm exhausted. We deserve a break.”

He doesn't understand why Dean seems to think a break is even a possibility. Sam is used to him refusing to recognize the jurisdiction of anyone who doesn't make a habit of carrying holy water and salt, to acting like any land that touches the road is some Winchester hobo birthright, but his patience with this mindset has just about stretched to a breaking point.

Sam's still looking determinedly at his laptop, but his eyes are no longer moving.

He wonders how it's going to happen, if he'll go all at once or if Dean will have to watch him slowly slip closer to the brink. Maybe it's already happened – maybe he was irrevocably ruined long ago and has been awaiting activation, like his whole life was some demonic take on the Manchurian Candidate.

“Sam?” Dean says impatiently.

Sam looks at him and says, quiet, “Yeah, sure. Let's just get through this case. We'll take stock from there.”

Dean lifts a hand and gives him a thumbs up. He lets it drop back down heavily, resting on his belly just above his belt.

“Deal.”

 

_Two Days Later_

 

He wakes up in an unfamiliar room.

A phone is vibrating on the bedside table. Head muzzy, he reaches over, fumbles and angles it so he can squint with light-sensitive eyes at the screen.

 _Dean calling_ , it helpfully supplies. Some mish-mash of instinct and morning blurriness makes him answer it.

His voice is still rough from sleep. “Hello?”

The call ends immediately, but before he can think anything of it, a man speaks behind him, “Sorry, dude. Finger must've slipped.”

Immediate spike in heart rate, lungs contracting; he's not alone.

He carefully levers himself up on his elbows and looks over at the speaker, who smirks and waves the phone at him before turning away to pull a leather jacket on over his flannel.

“Anyway, isn't it time you got up? It's almost ten.”

Cleanly ignoring the way his whole body has seized in alarm, he glances at the clock on the bedside table for confirmation but sees 9:36 staring back at him in undeniable red. He looks back over at the man skeptically. “We clearly have different definitions of _almost_.”

He still has no idea who this man is. Aside from, apparently, 'Dean'.

“Well, Sammy,” Dean said carefully, almost as if he was talking to a child or someone very slow. “In case you haven't noticed, this is a fancy hotel room. And everyone knows hotel rooms say they stop serving breakfast at 10 but really they start packing up the good shit fifteen minutes before that.”

He barely pays any attention to the screed, preoccupied with thoughts that were rather more urgent. Thoughts like: what the hell is going on? There's a red alert going off in his head, growing more insistent with every passing second.

“Dude, you tracking?”

He looks up, distracted, and hastily covers his surprise with a stretch. “What? Yeah – look, just go get breakfast, if you're that hot and bothered over it.”

Annoyance flits across the man's face but then Dean shrugs and swipes a key card from the table next to the television. “See if I bring you anything, attitude like that,” he says over his shoulder. He finally lets himself out of the room.

As soon as the door closes, he throws off the bedsheets and crosses the room to flip the stopper. Then he winces and glances down at his ankle, which is sore like a recent sprain just beginning to heal; the ankle is wrapped, he notices. A thorough and competent job.

Great: so literally running for it is definitely not an option.

He hovers there for a second longer, fighting the impulse to just leave anyway. He has at least ten minutes free and clear in the room. That's plenty of time to do some reconnaissance and decide whether he wants to still be here when the other man returns.

He pivots on his one good heel and goes into the bathroom to see what he looks like.

 _Okay_ , he thinks. _Not bad._ He's slightly confused by the hair – he doesn't feel like the kind of guy who would bother with something so impractical. But he'll have to leave that aside for now.

Sammy, the man had called him. Looking hard into the mirror, he doesn't think he _looks_ like any kind of Sammy _._ And he doesn't much want to think about why a smirking, too-pretty man with access to his room would be calling him dumb nicknames. Another thing to leave aside. He's racking up quite the tally and he's only been awake five minutes.

So: Sam, then.

He goes back and looks at the phone. He is both relieved and somewhat irritated to find that he's able to unlock it with a simple button on the side. But as he goes into his contacts and sees Dean is the only one, he realizes why there's no security set up – the phone must be new. Brand new, in fact. Which is either an extremely unfortunate coincidence or implies something shady, he isn't sure which yet.

He searches the room until he finds a duffle bag that contains clothes that fit him. There's only one spare set, so it must be some kind of overnight bag. Next comes a laptop – he sets this aside for further investigation.

Underneath the laptop is a handgun.

Sam stops, still bent over the bag, and cocks his head to the side thoughtfully. He prods around mentally to see if he is alarmed or bothered by this discovery, but ultimately shrugs. He takes the gun out, checks its magazine and safety, and then tucks it in the waistband at his back.

Glancing at the clock, heart still going faster than he'd like, he goes over and flips the door stopper again. No point in risking any unnecessary suspicion.

His rest of his search is quick.

The bag that must belong to the other man – _Dean_ – contains only a toiletry kit, a crumpled pair of boxer briefs, a walkman, and a rosary. Sam doesn't know which of these latter two is weirder. Probably the walkman.

He finds a gift bag next to the television and hastily drops it again after glancing inside and finding piles of condoms, lube, and a pair of fuzzy handcuffs. Looking around the room once more, he reorients his perspective. Judging from the pillows on the bed, they both definitely slept there last night.

Well, at least he knows he can land attractive hookups –

He pauses.

He'd checked the trash cans and bedsheets – there were no condom wrappers or any other sign that sex had been had the night before. And Sam had been sleeping in pajama pants and a shirt. He thinks about the way the man had talked to him, familiar and way more cranky than one might expect from a casual one night stand.

He arrives at the somewhat horrifying conclusion that he might have managed to forget his boyfriend on top of everything else. Great.

After a moment, he impatiently dismisses that whole train of thought as irrelevant and turns to go over his options.

Option one: he tells Dean he can't remember anything and together they try to figure it out. This has the obvious benefit of getting immediate answers – if he can trust what Dean tells him. The prospect of this makes him feel nebulously uneasy. Sam may not know anything about himself, but he gets the distinct sense that he's not the type to successfully perform trust falls on command.

Option two: he grabs his stuff and just leaves, tries to figure out what happened to his memories on his own. This option isn't particularly appealing either, because he'd be turning his back on the ripest source for intel i.e. this Dean guy.

Which leaves him with option three: he stays and tries to bluff his way through until he's gathered enough information to reassess options one and two.

Right on the heels of this decision is Dean's return to the room.

He has a piece of toast between his teeth and is balancing two large coffee cups sans lids and a tray of food. He sets this all down on the table in the corner – impressively not spilling a drop of the coffee – and then stands beside it munching on the toast.

He gestures at the tray and speaks, still chewing: “I warned you. All they had left was some melon shit and yogurt.”

“That's fine,” Sam says, a little bemused by his tone. He said he wasn't going to bring him anything, and then he does but acts grumpy about it. So they've been together long enough they've reached the comfortable bitching stage?

He sits at the table and pulls the tray of food towards him, puzzling all this over. The melon is a little on the tender side, but it smells all right, so he starts poking at it with greater intent.

Meanwhile, Dean starts pacing.

Sam watches him with equal parts open curiosity and general appreciation for the fit of his jeans. He notices Dean is distinctly bow-legged and gives an intrigued mental _hm_.

So he learns another thing about himself: he can feel attraction even when in uncertain and likely-dangerous situations.

He makes his way methodically through the edible bits of the melon and then grabs the yogurt cup and peels back the thin foil cover.

Dean's still pacing.

He stick his plastic fork into the yogurt and ventures, “Uh, Dean, is there – something wrong?”

Dean glances sharply over at him, like he's surprised Sam would notice his pacing or general freakish behavior. His eyes flick down to the yogurt in his hand. Sam looks at it too and, after a second, waggles it interrogatively. Dean's lips flatten into a thin line.

“I was going to wait until you were done,” he says grimly. Sam forks some of the yogurt into his mouth wonders if he's about to get dumped by a boyfriend he doesn't even remember.

He decides the morning really can't get any worse, though he's already feeling a little wistful thinking about those bow legs. “Just go ahead and say what you gotta say, man.”

Dean's response it to grab the other chair and straddle it backwards. Sam forks some more yogurt and deliberately does not eye the wide spread of his legs. Perving on someone about to dump you is just undignified.

Dean leans forward over the back of the chair and says, “I think there's something really weird going on in this hotel.”

* * *

So Sam doesn't get dumped, which he supposes is good news for non-amnesiac him. But it appears the general heightened sense of danger he's felt since he woke up was not just because of his lack of memories. Some deeper instinct is in play, an instinct that tells him to believe Dean when he tells him about the weird vibe he got down at breakfast and the squirrelly behavior in some of the people he's passed in the halls.

The fact that they are both packing guns is also decent tip-off.

Because, yes: Dean also has a gun. A beautiful pearl-handled Colt that he checks the chamber of before they leave the room again.

His instincts have other things to say – that he can trust Dean to the ends of the earth, for one, and that he can't trust Dean's priorities an inch, for two. This latter is the reason he decides to keep a lid on his current amnesiac state, at least for the time being. He figures without his memories, he can't be too careful about who and what he trusts.

“So we'll go check out the dealer's room,” he says as the head for the door.

He'd found a brochure for the convention and the map of the hotel with the dealer's room circled in red ink underneath a glass of water next to his side of the bed. If Dean notices any hiccup in his behavior or knowledge of the situation, he doesn't give any indication.

“Right, just – don't say I didn't warn you,” Dean says, and opens the door.

“It's a convention,” Sam points out, “Select group of people hyper-focused on one thing –

“A _weird_ thing.”

“ – one, weird thing,” Sam amends. “So maybe you just misunder...” he gives up on the sentence as three people walk silently in single-file past them down the hallway, eyes rolled to the back of their heads. They're moving in unison, like some fucked up marching band. “Huh.”

“See?” Dean says. “I'm getting serious Overlook vibes, man.”

“Why don't we just get out of here, then? Check out. Leave.”

Dean looks at him like he's crazy. “No way. Don't you want to know what's going on?”

The awful thing is that Sam agrees, and not just because he thinks his sudden lack of memories must be related. No, he agrees because he feels _obligated._ Checking this out is something he feels he needs to do.

He hopes he's not vastly misreading his own intelligence, and that he and Dean aren't a pair of horror movie victims in waiting.

“Hey, lovebirds!” someone says. They both turn around fast enough that the girl's smile falters slightly. But her companion, a slender man with a violet mohawk who's height rivals Sam's, just laughs.

“Have a bit of a _late morning_ , did you?” he says. This sets the pair off giggling and they continue past Sam and Dean down the hall, waving back at them and calling, “See you at the panels!”

Sam doesn't know what to say, not remembering the two anymore than he remembers the rest of his life. For his own part, Dean is watching their retreat with narrowed eyes.

Sam says, “Wishing your morning was as fun as they seem to think it was?”

Dean's eyes slide over to Sam and warm up immediately. After a second, he winks and says, “Don't you know it.” He slaps Sam on the ass and starts walking down the hall after the giggling pair and the freak trio.

And Sam may not have any clue who he is, but he's feeling safe in calling after him, “Hey, that is not _on_ , man.”

They take the stairs rather than risk sharing the elevator with the pair from the hallway. Down on the first floor, the casino atrium is already brimming with activity, tourists and senior citizen gambling addicts who like to squeeze a few craps machines between their early bird breakfasts and lunchtime naps. Dean looks over at the casino with clear longing and glances meaningfully back at Sam as if to say _we're hitting that up later._ Sam rolls his eyes without thinking.

The hallways on the convention side of the hotel are almost as busy. Nothing appears out of the ordinary on the surface of things, or at least nothing out of the ordinary for a convention called the 'Ethereal Moon Magic Con'.

Sam hopes fervently that their presence here has some kind of explanation. He doesn't feel like the kind of man who would be into Ethereal Moon anything.

They follow the signs to the dealer room and step through its wide doors. The very first thing they see is a banner that declares, “Ward it off: Evil! Financial Ruin! STDs!”

“Oh, c'mon. Who believes this stuff?” Sam asks incredulously.

The large, bearded man sitting at the table is buried in a lurid paperback and seems largely unbothered by either passing traffic or Sam's pronouncement.

“The world is full of suckers,” Dean says sagely, looking around with bright-eyed interest. “Just be glad you're not one of them.”

“I guess,” Sam says. “But it does beg the question – ”

“How are we supposed to find anything useful in here?” Dean finishes. “Yeah. How do we tell the freaky from the freaks?”

“I guess we could just check around. See if anything catches our eye.” Sam wrinkles his nose at a table hawking an assorting of mystical pewter tokens, some of whose names he's pretty sure border on culturally insensitive.

If Sam didn't already suspect what he did for a living, the next forty-five minutes would have clued him in. They methodically check out every single booth and table, loathe to overlook anything that might be relevant – and nothing is. As far as Sam can tell, the dealer's room is exclusively reserved for hucksters, fake mystics, and, for some reason, a small but dedicated handful of kink enthusiasts.

“Sammy, I don't know what it has to do with Ethereal Moons, but I think we should take a closer look at this.” Dean is flipping through a large book on tantric sex. It has pictures.

Sam glances at the photo over Dean's shoulder and feels his eyebrows involuntarily climb. “That's – some serious flexibility.”

Dean smirks at him. “Don't sell yourself short. I'm sure you could get there if you tried.”

Inexplicably, his first reaction to this overt flirting is to roll his eyes. He looks away. “Anyway. Somehow I doubt any of this has to do with the weirdness from earlier.”

The woman minding the booth who has been hovering a few feet away stops pretending not to listen. She steps forward with a smile. “Actually, you'd be interested to know that sex magic has a very long history of use.”

“You don't say?” Dean turns to her, and the smirk becomes a friendly grin; under its compelling influence, the woman pinks and brightens.

“Why, yes! If you only consider many of the ritualistic aspects of – shall we call it _the love dance_?” (“Oh, let's,” says Dean) “then very quickly you start to recognize lines of power. At the turn of the last century, Aleister Crowley taught that every act of sexual congress should be treated as a sacrament...”

Sam is apparently too polite to make a face and so chooses to subtly drift backwards out of the conversation. He turns to the next table, which he is relieved to see appears to be a bookseller.

“Did you two have a fight?”

After a second, Sam realizes the question was addressed to him. Startled, he looks up at the girl sitting behind the bookseller table. He glances back at Dean to see if he overheard, but he is now watching a toy demo with unnerving interest.

Sam looks back at the girl. “No. Why would you say that?”

She flushes a bright red, mortified. “Oh, I didn't mean to – it's just yesterday, you guys seemed so – ” she stumbles into silence and ducks her head. She starts straightening up the rows of books, as if require all her attention.

Sam thinks hard. So did they come in here yesterday? Dean didn't say anything to imply they'd already visited the dealer room. Did she see them elsewhere at the convention? A panel?

The part of his brain that is focused on less important details is conducting its own analysis. She thought they might be fighting – are they usually more demonstrative? Has Dean noticed something is off with him, is he wondering at Sam's sudden distance? He did crack that joke about Sam's bendiness.

Sam glances back at Dean, who winks and says something that makes the sex table dealer throw her head back and laugh.

Then again, Dean seems like the kind of guy who just makes comments like that.

He should probably take him aside and admit the truth, that he doesn't remember anything. He's almost positive he can trust him; everything in him responds to the man like it would its own fellow limb.

Alternatively, he's holding some cards right now. He could wait a little while longer and in the meantime run some tests. Make a move. Something subtle enough to be disavowed if he's wrong but strong enough that he'll know if he's right.

They walk by four more tables before he sees an opening. A candle dealer is talking about the changes the convention has made over the years and wasn't the opening ceremony _such_ a shitshow? If they'd used _his_ product, the effect on the crowd would have been something else entirely...

Sam nods along and, after a completely natural number of seconds, casually reaches up and puts his hand on Dean's back. Mid-to-lower back. He's a safe several inches above the swell of the ass but unmistakably below the friend zone of the shoulder blades.

And then Sam says steadily, like every ounce of his focus isn't lasered in on the test currently being conducted beneath his fingertips, “We arrived late and missed the first day,” and he knows this much is true because the room receipt on the table said they checked in only yesterday, “but I've heard a couple people now mention the ceremony. What happened?”

Under his hand, he can feel Dean's back muscles flex for a moment (like he's surprised? Like he's stretching?) but then just as quickly he relaxes and presses minutely back against Sam's hand.

Okay. Sam bites his lip and makes the appropriate facial expression at the candle dealer. Okay, so it's like that.

 

“Did you notice anything?” Sam asks as they step out into the main atrium almost an hour later.

“Nope. But I found out which stone best complements my aura.” Dean spreads his arms. “I'm a Larimar, who knew?”

By unspoken mutual agreement, they turn and make their way over to the lounge. It's barely noon, but apparently this is just the way they roll: they order beers and settle at a table along the periphery so they can keep an eye on the glossy atrium, with the convention goers to the left and the midday gambling addicts across the way.

Sam drinks his beer and continues to mull over whether he should just give up the game and tell Dean about his memories – he's pretty sure by now, or at least his gut is, that Dean's not a deceiving agent in whatever this is. Surely if that were the case, they'd have gotten somewhere by now.

He glances over at the man in question, watches him watch the milling crowd. His eyes are narrowed in thought, and despite his general upbeat mood all morning, his mouth is frowning a little. It could just be his resting face, but Sam gets the feeling something's bothering him. The convention, maybe, or he's noticed Sam has been acting strange.

He's about to suggest half-heartedly that they check out the convention schedule, maybe split up to go to the panels, when a woman screams from across the lobby.

The two of them are out of their chairs in an instant, before most of the lobby has even registered the sound and started to look for its source.

She'd been waiting at the elevator bank along the back wall, and is now stumbling forward, her arms shaking but outstretched; dying to help, too horrified to quite make it.

They're at her side in seconds, each with a hand up to support her shoulder. Others start to amass behind them, all staring. Sam hears Dean mutter a curse as they both take in the scene in the open elevator.

It's a kid, maybe eight years old. She's sitting against the back elevator wall. A streak of viscera from when she slid down serve as her halo. Her eyes are open, two stark white dots on a face otherwise obliterated by red. Sam thinks she's breathing, but it's hard to tell because she's so _still_ , just sitting sprawled against the wall, watching them all.

Dean hands the shaking woman off to Sam completely. He accepts the weight unconsciously, watching as he runs forward to the elevator, getting there just before the doors start to close. A few others sprint after him, shock giving way to action and then everyone wants to help or gawk or just know more.

Sam watches Dean kneel down next to the kid, one hand checking the pulse at her wrist, the other reaching up to gently touch her shoulder, his mouth moving quick but soft, too soft to hear from here. After a second, the kid turns her head to look at him, but she still doesn't speak.

Dean is a picture of contradictions, tension in every line of his body except the ones directed at the little girl.

The crowd thickens and tightens, blocking the tableau. And Sam thinks, a spot in his chest contracting tender: okay, so it's like that.

 

He helps the woman to a seat in the lounge, gets her a water; considers her shaken expression and exchanges it for some brandy. She doesn't so much as blink at the burn when she sips.

“I'm going to go check out what's happening, okay?” he says and leaves before she can do more than nod silently.

He starts to cut through the crowd and is met halfway by Dean, coming the other direction. Dean's eyes alight on him, and he jerks his head to the side. Sam follows. They walk past the crowd down to the next clear elevator and get in.

“Floor?” asks Sam, hand hovering over the buttons.

Dean shakes his head. “Kid didn't say.”

“Did you ask her?”

“Sam.” Dean meets his eyes. “Kid can't _speak_.”

Traumatized, Sam thinks, of course. He doesn't like the bleak understanding hanging back in Dean's expression, but he figures now is not the time to start asking questions he should probably know the answer to.

He doesn't say anything else, just turns and methodically presses every floor number, until the three rows are all glowing gold back at them.

The doors open on the second floor; they poke their head out and look down the length of the hallway. Nothing. They lean back and the doors close again. It's the same story on the third and fourth floors, but when the doors open on the fifth, they can already hear the shocked voices, _someone call the lobby_ and _it goes to that room_ and _I'm calling 911_.

Sam looks at Dean. “How will we get into the room?”

“No need,” say Dean. He flicks his hand up, revealing a key card tucked between his index and middle fingers. “It was in her hoodie.”

“You pick-pocketed a traumatized child?”

Dean pauses, eyebrows crashing down. “Yes?”

He shakes his head. “All right.”

They step out of the elevator and follow the bloody shoe prints (did the kid roll around in the blood, how did she get so _covered_?). They pass groups of hotel residents, their phones all out, voices raised and talking quickly. They stutter and fall silent as Sam and Dean arrive at the door, card out and ready.

“Is that your room?” a man demands to know. “What the hell happened?”

Sam says, “A little girl showed up in the lobby, she gave us the card.”

The man is not satisfied with that answer, looking them up and down suspiciously. “And who are _you_? Where's the damn hotel security?”

“ACPD,” says Sam. “Off-duty.”

Dean swipes the card. It take three tries before the light flashes green. He takes the edge of his shirt and uses it to turn the handle at its edge – preserving fingerprints, Sam realizes. He doesn't know if he's doing it for the benefit of their audience or the real police, when they come.

The door swings inward, and they all crane to get a look around Sam and Dean's bodies.

“Oh my god.”

“Fuck. Fucking fuck _fuck_ – ”

The room is identical to the one Sam and Dean have except for the queen-sized beds and the fact that it looks like a person pulled a pin on a grenade and then swallowed it. The walls glisten like wet paint. The air is stale, humid – the smell is overpowering.

Someone behind them turns and wretches. For the sake of the eventual forensics unit, Sam hopes they missed the footprints.

They don't venture far into the room, but they go farther than any of the onlookers at their back. Dean steps carefully around some peripheral blood spatter and looks around the corner. When he looks back at Sam, who has his phone out and is taking pictures, he starts a little.

Sam looks at him. “What?”

Dean shakes his head. “Uh, nothing. That's a good idea.”

Sam goes back to documenting the room. He tries to focus all his attention on the task, ignoring the urgent mental voice that's asking why he isn't more freaked out. It would be better, he thinks, if he had been the one to throw up. But his gorge stays stubbornly down.

They have only a minute with the room. They step back out just in time for security to arrive, a house medic hurrying in the vanguard. Sam and Dean try to blend into the hallway crowd, which by now has tripled in size. Everyone wants to get a look, until they suddenly don't.

One woman, short and stocky with a mass of dark curls, takes a look in the room and looks stricken, but she doesn't back away like the others; she turns and asks the medic something. Her question was too quiet to hear, but the medic's answer is not:

“We won't know until someone wades in there. If you're asking me if I know what a body's worth of blood looks like after Jackson Pollack's through with it, I can't say.”

Sam turns and clicks through the photos on his phone. Beside him, Dean leans against the wall and crosses his arms.

“What the hell?” he asks finally.

“Yeah,” says Sam.

“You know, down there I was starting to think I was wrong, that I'd just been imaging things. But when I said I thought something weird was going on, I didn't mean anything like _this_.” He indicates the scene down the hall with a nod.

Hotel management is the last to arrive; the man takes a turn peering into the room and blanches.

“Haven't any of you ever watched TV?” one of the security guys demands, speaking loudly over the furor of the crowd. “This is a _crime scene_ , everyone get back – ”

The manager says sharply, “We don't know that's it a crime scene, it could be a – an accident.”

“Irregardless,” says security, doubling down on his glare, “we can't have anyone messing with the scene until the police arrive. Have they been called?” The manager's sulky silence is the only answer. Security straightens up. “As head of security, I'll naturally act as liaison to the ACPD.”

“Didn't those guys say they were with ACPD?” someone says, and suddenly several people are taking notice of them again. Sam straightens up and immediately realizes this makes him look guilty.

Dean doesn't move. “Think you heard wrong,” he says easily. “We're just here for the convention.”

The moment passes, for now. Hard to concentrate on a pair of random men when there's at least one exploded body just a wall away.

“Why did this have to happen on a Friday night,” the manager says fretfully.

“Oh, brother,” Dean mutters under his breath.

“Hmm?” Sam's not really listening, back to squinting at the picture on his phone. There's just something about the way the blood landed.

“Just feeling really comforted by the sanctity of life, you know? Glad to see we all still have respect for the dead.”

Sam absently reaches out and squeezes his arm. “Okay, sounds great – Dean, I think I'm going to go back to the our room, there's some things I want to look into on the laptop.”

Dean shifts on his feet restlessly. “Should I walk you back or something? You know, for safety.” He glances down the hall at the still-arguing staff, clearly torn between wanting to shake them down for info and walking his proverbial date to the door.

Sam finally looks away from his phone, feeling his face wrinkle into an unimpressed grimace. “What? No.”

“You sure?” He says absently. He's completely focused on the staff now.

“ _Yes_ , I am sure. Jesus.”

Dean tears his gaze away from the scene near the room and looks back at Sam, suddenly indecisive for reasons Sam can't understand. Then his expression clears and he tips forward to brush his lips along his jaw. A hand fumbles for one of his, and Sam thinks, bemused, that he's going for a handshake. But Dean just – squeezes his hand.

It all happens in a matter of a seconds, then Dean is stepping back and starting down the hallway, tossing a quick, “Okay, see you soon,” over his shoulder.

Sam feels unaccountably staggered as he turns and heads back to the elevator. He can still feel the spot where Dean's lips had rested. It's one thing to have evidence that he's in a serious relationship, but it's something else entirely to experience it.

* * *

Back in the room, he opens up the laptop. It's definitely older than the phone, so he doesn't hold out much hope for getting on – but when he boots it up, the login screen has two registered users, SAM and Guest. SAM has a password; Guest does not.

He has nothing to back his hunch up, but he sends a mental _thank you_ to Dean for never bothering to customize his account. It takes only a few minutes to confirm that there isn't anything useful of a personal nature in the guest account (for the sake his sanity, he isn't going to look at the porn bookmarks).

He exports the photos he took to the laptop and sets about trying to isolate the blood spill. It's tedious work without a proper photo editing program, and he makes a mental note to look into acquiring one down the line. He works for a while, but soon enough the repetitive nature of the task proves no competition for the thoughts pressing forward in his mind.

He's not unaware of how much better he feels now over an hour ago – how investigating a violent murder feels close to solid ground. It makes him wonder if he's seen combat. Time in the military could explain some things.

He's going to have to tell Dean the truth, he realizes. There's no way around it. Should probably have told him the moment he woke up, but it's not like he knew the stakes were life-and-death. Even knowing it now, he's reluctant to broach the subject.

Is this guilt, he wonders.

As the day drags on, his reasons for the deception have changed cephalopodic, taking on whatever character and shape needed so long as the end result is avoiding detection. But now he realizes this whole thing is bigger than just him.

He and Dean obviously aren't just boyfriends or whatever. They are _partners_. Everything points to it – the way Dean responded to the situation in the lobby with instinctive responsibility, the way he moved forward like he knew without looking that Sam would be right beside him. How, when Sam looks up with something to say, to contribute, Dean's eyes are already resting on him, warm and expectant.

It is such a strange feeling, to treasure being trusted when he can't remember a time he wasn't.

 

By the time he hears a pair of murmuring voices on the other side of the door, he has isolated a pattern in the blood splatter and started rudimentary research.

The locking mechanism clicks and Dean enters. A woman is with him; after a couple seconds, Sam recognizes her as one of the other bystanders from the crime scene, the one who hadn't backed away, but turned and asked the medic a question.

“This is my partner, Sam,” Dean is telling her, hand gesturing like he's a salesperson displaying his finest goods. “Sam, this is Maria Aquilina. Get this: she's a private dick.” Dean is clearly quite taken with the thought, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth when he looks back at her.

For her own part, Maria doesn't even blink at the title as she shakes Sam's hand. Then she steps back and looks between them. “So did you guys just get in? I looked for you yesterday. Jesse's off-grid by now, can't be reached, but he said you'd make contact.”

Sam's stomach clenches, but Dean apparently knows what she's talking about and says, “Yeah, looks like Jesse forgot a few things on our end as well, like how to contact you.” He shrugs. “We've just been scoping out the place. Figured you'd pop up when things started getting weird.”

“Weird, right. That's certainly one word for it.” She grimaces and looks around the room, like she's expecting to see something. “So. Hunters. What's that like?”

Sam and Dean exchange a look.

 _Hunters_. It feels right.

“I've been a private investigator for fifteen years,” she says, taking their silence as reticence. “Pretty much impossible not to come up against some freaky stuff. I mean, the number of people trying to curse their spouses alone...” She shakes her head with an ironic smile, one that says she has seen some shit.

“That's humanity for you,” Dean says blithely, taking a seat. “What do you usually do when that happens – call Jesse?”

So here it is, the confirmation of everything he's suspected since he woke up this morning. Odd how the world cracks open and shows itself to be festering.

Maria shrugs. “Yeah, basically. I don't usually get paid enough to deal with all that, but this time my client's more – well, _invested_. So of course Jesse chooses now of all times to go to ground.”

“When you say invested,” Sam says slowly, “what exactly do you mean?”

Her expression evens out, down to business. “They lost someone last year. This hotel, same convention” She looks between them deliberately. “You guys did get the lowdown about this case, right?”

Dean says easily, “Of course. Just weren't sure they were connected – I mean, another scene like the one in 503 woulda made the papers.”

Maria shakes her head. “There wasn't any details in the paper. And it also wasn't the only death.” She leans forward, elbows on knees. “When I started looking into it – in each of the past two years, three people have died in this hotel during the Eternal Moon convention.”

“So there are two more people somewhere in this hotel who are living on borrowed time.”

Maria nods.

“Six deaths in two years?” says Sam, glancing quickly between them. “Pretty sure _that_ would have made the papers. If this is true, how the hell is the convention still running? Or the hotel?”

“So maybe it really is magic.” Maria pauses and winces. “Or maybe it's Atlantic City, and the owners know exactly who to bribe.”

Dean says, “Okay, but what about your client? If there's one person looking for answers over these deaths, there's gotta be others.”

“About that,” she says, and looks down at her hands. “When I found out about the other victims, I checked them out, looking for patterns. Whatever I could find. The only thing they had in common, far as I could tell, is that they didn't have many people who'd notice them gone.”

“That little girl in the lobby is sure as fuck going to notice her dad gone,” says Dean.

“You got an ID on the victim?” Sam asks sharply.

“It's how I finally bumped into Maria here. We were both after the same information. So I sweet-talked the woman behind the counter for a distraction while she looked it up.” Dean nods at her. “You're quick, by the way. Lotta practice accessing records you shouldn't?”

“Permissability in court is not exactly my first priority.”

Dean grins in the face of such pragmatism.

Sam waits to feel jealous that Dean was off capering with someone else, but the feeling never comes. Good to know I'm secure, he thinks.

He clears his throat and changes the subject. “Well, we still don't know why or how the man died, but I may have found something about a what.” He turns his laptop screen around, and both Dean and Maria lean forward to squint at the image Sam has painstakingly isolated.

“Is this supposed to mean something, man?” Dean asks eventually. Maria looks politely blank.

Sam ignores his tone. He clicks through the images and points. “Something about the blood spatter felt off, and once I started looking closer, I realized it's because it wasn't random – I mean, the blood didn't land where you'd expect it to.”

“Wait, are you also a forensics analyst?” Maria asks.

It's a good question. Sam opens his mouth, not knowing what will come out, but Dean beats him to it.

“Nah,” says Dean, “Sam's just a geek.”

“If you look closely,” Sam says with a pointed glare, “you can see there's a pattern – it's what caught my eye. There's nothing natural about the way the blood curves and turns here,” click, point, “here and here. See?”

“I guess?” Maria says. For his own part, Dean continues to look nonplussed.

Sam forges on. “I tried a reverse image search, but wasn't getting much of use. Three pages deep, I noticed a few references to an old slavonic script.”

Maria glances back at Dean; Sam recognizes the look, despite his lack of memories: _is he for real?_ “Okay, well, what does it say?”

Sam shakes his head, impatient. “Doesn't work like that, I can't _read_ this. It'd be easier to find a university library or something.”

“Okay,” Dean says, standing up and reaching for his jacket. “We'll head out for a bit – while you do that, I can look into the history of the hotel. Maria?”

She waves them off. “I'm going to call and check in at home, then start asking around about the father, see if he was here for the con – oh, here,” she looks around the room and grabs the convention map, tearing off a corner. She scrawls something and hands it to Dean. “Here's my cell. Call when you guys get back, we can catch each other up.”

And just like that, they're part of a team.

* * *

Sam takes half an hour looking up the likeliest places they can check out for research, Dean flopped on the bed channel surfing and occasionally making derogatory comments about how long it's taking him to get ready to go, like it's some achievement in manliness to walk out the door unprepared.

Walking back down the hallway is eerie, because it seems too normal for the site of a recent murder. They pass three people, all of whom seem to be discussing a panel on tarot reading.

The elevator the girl was in has an _Out of Order_ sign on it, which makes Sam frown. Shouldn't the police have put up tape?

They get into a different elevator, and Dean shakes his head at Sam. “This whole place gives me the creeps.”

The doors open on the busy lobby. It's late enough in the afternoon that vacationers have started to drink in earnest and gamble accordingly. There's a healthy cross current between the casino and the lounge, and everyone is unsettlingly carefree, or distracted enough to pass for it. One could almost be forgiven forgetting about the slaughter up on the fifth floor.

“C'mon, let's get out of here,” Dean mutters and his dark tone has Sam feeling obscurely wistful for his delight over the casino from just that morning.

They set off across the polished floor of the lounge. And then something weird begins to happen.

It starts with a feeling of amorphous disquiet, a premonition that he's about to make a terrible mistake. With every step closer to the door, however, this feeling digs its claws in, becomes an almost physical stitch in his side. He glances at Dean, sees the pinch of his eyebrows, and knows he isn't alone.

They're five feet from the revolving door and it stops being a matter of willpower. It's not a choice at all – like a pair of birds in synchronized flight, they silently wheel away from the exit in a broad arc and end up among the corner armchairs between the front desk and elevator bank.

“What,” says Dean, “the fuck?”

“Yeah.” Sam is breathing a little hard. They both are. He glances back at the doors and almost flinches, quickly looks away again.

They stand there marinating in a poisonous silence for a few moments. Sam tries to reel back the adrenaline response – there's no _fight_ here, not yet. There's nothing to expend this energy on. Not yet. So what the hell?

“We can't leave the hotel,” he says eventually.

Dean is glaring at the doors. “Yeah, looks like.”

“Odds that it's just us?” asks Sam, thinking of his memory problem.

Dean starts to shake his head, then mid-motion switched it to a meaningful nod. Bracing himself, Sam turns and looks back at the doors.

It's not unlike forcing himself to star directly at the sun or trying to psyche himself up to touch a hot stove. Everything in him is screaming that this is dangerous. He can feel sweat break out all over his body.

“Do you see? No one's going out,” Dean says after an agonizing minute. By the sound of his voice, he's as bad off as Sam.

“No one's coming in either,” says Sam.

They turn around, setting their backs to the doors like a pair of ostriches burying their heads in the sand.

“Has to be related to the murder, right? Has to be.”

Dean nods. “But – so, what, there's some kind of curse on this place and we're the only ones who _notice_? I don't see anyone else having the shakes in this lobby.”

Sam presses his lips together in thought. “I don't know. Maybe we notice because we were already looking?”

“Creepy as fuck,” says Dean, and Sam can't argue with that.

He has a sudden thought. “Dean – what about the police? Did you ever see them arrive at the scene?”

Dean shakes his head and says slowly, “Followed the head of security for the hotel, that's where I bumped into Maria.”

Sam gives him a significant look; Dean shrugs. They turn and head for the front desk.

It doesn't occur to Sam to worry about how they'll play it before Dean's already leaning over the polished granite counter and directing a smoldering smile down at the young woman behind it. Sam redirects his gaze to the woman as well, trying to look neutral and harmless and not as oddly mortified as he feels at the sight of Dean pulling this act.

He'd assume it was a jealous reaction, but he doesn't feel jealous, just kind of embarrassed.

Maybe Dean does this kind of thing a lot?

“...were up on the fifth floor and heard about the incident, you see,” Dean is explaining to the wide-eyed girl. “And we were hoping to talk to the police about it. Think we might be able give a statement, help fill in some details. Are they still around?”

“I'm so sorry,” says the girl, sounding like she means it but also something else – baffled. “I'm not sure what incident you're referring to, but there haven't been any police come through or anything like that.” She looks between them uncertainly. “I could check with the manager?”

They can't know if the hotel management is involved, so Sam speaks up, demurs and makes their excuses before pulling Dean away. When they're ten feet away, he glances back over his shoulder; the girl has returned to her computer screen, expression bland and unconcerned. He gets the creeps just looking at her.

“We need to get the hell out of here,” he says to Dean, who nods in grim agreement. “No matter what, we get through those doors.”

They try for the exit again, and it's worse now because they know to expect it, they _see_ it and it sees them right back. It's like trying to reach something in a bad dream. They have no traction.

This time they fetch up in the lounge, bellies to the bar and bleached knuckles resting on the counter.

Dean orders two double whiskeys, neat, and then turns to Sam. He's breathing hard again, a little pink in the face like he's just committed some great exertion. Sam's own pulse is beating rabbit-fast. The knowledge of the doors' presence loom up at his back; he's not fully comfortable being even this close.

They don't speak.

The whiskeys arrive. They down them and immediately order another from the unfazed bartender. They're impatient for the drinks, fingers restlessly moving over the smooth surface of the bar. The doors pulse at their backs like an exposed artery pumping out lifeblood.

They need a distraction, a turn of the mind. If they don't find one, he thinks they might be swallowed whole.

He looks at Dean, who is licking his lips like he's trying to chase the last of the whiskey. And Sam shouldn't want to chase after it in his place, because it was rail liquor and pretty damn bad, but he's having a bit of a day. Contemplating Dean's mouth is far more appealing than focusing on the mouth of hell sitting at his back.

Dean notices his stare and returns it with some intensity. The second whiskeys arrive and the bartender says, “Take it upstairs guys, no one wants to see that.”

Dean turns away, breaking off eye contact like a floodgate slamming shut. They down their second drinks, and Dean tosses some cash on the counter.

Sam is still thinking of those doors. The retreat to the bar brought some momentary relief, but it's like cool water on a bad burn. He can feel the discomfort building up again the longer they stand there.

“Might as well go back to the room, try to figure this out,” he says. “I can try finding a specialist to email the pictures to.”

“Yes,” says Dean, so readily Sam has to wonder if he's agreeing to something else entirely, something Sam didn't say but perhaps meant.

They head back to the elevator bank. One is already open, a small group of people just starting to step into it, but Dean stops him from joining with a hand on his arm.

Sam looks at him. The elevator closes.

He takes his hand back and cuts his eyes away. He pushes the button for another elevator and they wait for it in silence, watching the red numbers tick down until a set of doors open, revealing an empty car.

They get in. Sam pushes the button for their floor. Next to him Dean shifts on his feet.

The elevator closes, the burnished metal of the doors throwing up a hazy reflection of two bodies standing close, held tense. Sam watches as Dean's reflection reaches out and palms his hip.

He doesn't push so much as encourage Sam to turn, turn and back up against the wall of the elevator so he can step in close and ghost his mouth along Sam's jaw, a more thorough version of what he did in the hallway earlier. He's barely touching him, but Sam feels pinned.

This close, it's obvious that Dean has to look up, and something in Sam likes that a lot. Likes that Dean has to push up to get his mouth on him, that he has to reach for him, over and over – has to _choose_ it.

Dean hasn't even kissed him properly yet, and he feels like he's dying for it, impatient at the slow teasing glide of those lips. He brings his own hands up, feels the solid, hard form of Dean, and pulls him roughly against him.

This close, he can see the slight jump in Dean's eyebrows at Sam's escalation, the dilation of his pupils, but when Dean speaks, just sounds amused. “So that's how it is?”

Sam's not thinking about maintaining a cover now. He operates on instinct and grips him tighter, tucking his fingers between worn denim and the smooth skin of Dean's hip. “That's how it is,” he agrees and takes his mouth in a kiss.

He wonders how many times they've done this. For obvious reasons it feels like the first time, but there's a familiarity to Dean's body and his reactions that makes him think they've been exactly here before. Hundreds, maybe thousands of times.

He must know this mouth, he's sure of it; knows the scrape of his stubble against his palm, the rhythm of breathing, which Sam matches easily like it's a beat he's been marching to his whole life. He presses against Dean like he wants go through all the layers of clothing and skin and bones, get at the core of him and worship there.

Sam may no longer remember the map to Dean's body, but he doesn't mind relearning it.

Dean breaks off the kiss and glances up at him, openly smiling. “Finally. Been wanting to do that all day.”

“Why didn't you, then?” Sam says, but they've hit their floor and the elevator doors are opening. They reluctantly step apart.

Sam's thinking they'll go back to the room and hash this out, take it horizontal. He's got ideas about that bed, and looking at him, he thinks Dean's of the same mind.

He barely notices the two girls they pass in the hallway, but he can't help but here when one of them says something about spell work. Both he and Dean slow and stop. He hears Dean mutter something low and heartfelt that sounds an awful lot like _goddamnit_ and can't help but agree.

“C'mon,” Sam says heavily, turning around and pushing at his shoulder. Dean submits with a mutinous expression that is mostly papered over by the time they catch up with the girls.

“Excuse me,” Sam says, and they turn to look at both him and Dean, painted eyes flicking with immediate interest between the two of them. “Sorry, we just overheard – you said someone was doing real spell work?”

“That's what we were told,” the girl on the left says, her tone inviting them to an airing of grievances. “So we went to check the guy's table out.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, and he said he could cure her ADHD. But now she can't stop thinking about the Marlins.”

Sam blinks.

“I don't – as in, like. The _team_?” asks Dean, sounding badly confused.

She nods, eyebrows arched, _you heard right buddy_. She turns to her friend. “Go ahead, Alyssa, tell them.”

“I can't believe they sacked Joe Girardi after he was named National League Manager of the Year,” Alyssa says obligingly.

Sam and Dean exchange baffled looks.

“She hates baseball,” the first girl says hotly. “ _And_ Florida!”

“Yeah, who doesn't?” says Dean.

“I wish we never came to this con,” Alyssa mumbles miserably.

Sam isn't sure of the appropriate level of sympathy for her sudden onset of obsession with Florida baseball, so he just asks, “Can you tell us which table this guy's at?”

 

It's the Cure Your STDs table, because of course it is.

No one is currently manning the table, and there is no sign mentioning when they'll be back.

“Think he bailed on the con?” Sam asks. “I mean, how many customers could he pull in before they start talking to each other and come after him?”

Dean waves the piece of paper he'd been reading. “What, and leave all his bullshit behind?”

The paper is a menu straight out of an email spam folder, a lengthy list of services ranging from the aforementioned STD cures to physical enhancements and mental health help to, curiously, taste bud manipulation.

Sam is torn between the likelihood of this guy being the culprit behind his missing memories and the conviction that he's not the kind of guy who would ever, ever go to a table like for any kind of service.

“Is this even legal?” he says, reading the menu over Dean's shoulder.

But Dean's attention has already moved on to the thick paperback splayed out pages-down on the folding chair behind the table. He hands Sam the menu and picks up the book, staring quizzically down at the cover, which shows only the headlights of a pickup truck and perhaps the cheesiest horror title Sam's ever heard of.

“Can't imagine why we gave this table a skip the first time around.”

Dean shrugs, unbothered. Sam can tell by the twitching curl of his mouth that he secretly wants to read the book. “Can't ignore any lead, Sam.”

“Right. So we still need to check back, even though it's probably a waste of time.” He eyes Dean and clears his throat, wanting to interrupt before he can get too involved with the book. “So – come back later?”

“What?” Dean looks up from reading the back of the book. “Oh, yeah. Sure.” He tosses the book back down, irrevocably losing the dealer's page.

Sam can't deny that he's frustrated and disappointed – he'd really been hoping to find some answers to at least one of the weird things going on in this hotel.

They head start to head back out, but Sam grabs Dean's arm suddenly.

Dean looks up. “Sam, I swear, I didn't want to read it – ”

“No, shut up – look at that.” He points to the far wall of the dealer room, already dragging the other man along to get a closer look.

“What am I supposed to be looking at?” Dean asks.

“The cornerstone. Do you see, there – ”

Dean sees. He tilts his head. “That looks – ”

“Yeah,” says Sam and smiles at him. They both see it.

Dean stares some more at the curves engraved in the cement block. “Same language, do you think?”

“I'd be willing to take odds on it.” Sam drops the hand he was using to hold Dean in place and digs out his phone to take a picture. “Do you think the rest of the building has the same design?”

Dean rubs a rueful hand along the back of his neck. “Only one way to find out.”

 

It's almost five by the time they get back to the room. Sam's phone is now full of photos of engraved stones and blood spatter. The entire ground floor of the hotel had been marked, and he doesn't know whether he is more excited about the lead or creeped out by his own excitement.

“What if this was all premeditated back to the very beginning?” he says as the door clicks shut after them. He absently swipes the door stopper, attention still mostly on his phone. “I mean, what if the building was _designed_ with this kind of purpose in mind?”

“Evil architecture?” Dean says. “Like in Ghostbusters?”

Sam looks at him. “Is that really your best point of reference?”

Dean shrugs, not offended in the least by Sam's look. He checks his own phone and then throws it down on the table in the corner. “Maria still hasn't texted.”

“Just as well,” he says, “I want to look into these designs, and it's going to take a while to try and do it from here.”

“Great.” Dean blows out a obnoxiously long, loud breath. After a moment, he says, “I'm kinda starving.”

Sam thinks about it and realizes he is too; upon further consideration, his breakfast of melon and a yogurt cup seem very far away.

He picks up the binder of food delivery options. He flips through a couple pages and says doubtfully, “Do you think whatever spell is on the hotel will effect pizza delivery?”

“Are you kidding?” Dean says, snatching the binder away from him. “Place like this, we're ordering room service.”

With what money, Sam wants to ask. His state of his wallet had been bleak, as in: fifteen dollars and no bank card. Maybe Dean is the moneyed partner in the relationship, though one look at his beaten leather jacket and boots makes Sam seriously doubt it.

“We've established that this hotel is under some kind of curse, and you want to eat the food here?”

Dean shakes his head. “Chill out, Sam, we already had breakfast. If there's some kind of Persephone and pomegranate seed shit going on, I think we're already toast.” He shrugs and continues perusing the menu. “Might as well get a steak out of it.”

Sam looks at him. He looks at him long and hard enough that he finally glances up from the menu, just in time for Sam to push him down on the bed.

“So you get turned on by Greek mythology,” Dean says, grinning at him brightly. “Okay. I'll take it.”

Maybe Sam does get turned on by Greek mythology – he wouldn't put anything past himself after the day's events – but he finds it more likely that he just gets turned on by Dean, who is _perfect_ for him, just incredible.

The menu gets dumped off the side of the bed, but Dean doesn't seem to care. He meets Sam's eyes and says, “Oh, _hell yes_.”

And then they're both scrambling for their belts. Sam can't take his eyes off the way Dean arcs his body up to push at his jeans and he's on him before he can get it done, mouth moving against the soft skin just above his boxer briefs.

Dean chokes on a laugh. “Lemme get these off, dude.” But he's no better than Sam, dragging him in for a kiss when he tries to back off, tangling their half-clad legs together.

He rolls them and then stretches up over Sam to strip his shirt off. He throws it off to the side and then looks down at Sam, hair ruffled up from the motion, eyes bright. He somehow looks younger without a shirt, like the layers he's ripped away were more than just cotton.

He's got a necklace, Sam notices. It's old, too ugly to be vanity jewelry, and somehow suits him completely.

It breaks him out of the moment and, despite the hot, hardening length he can feel pressing again his own, Sam hesitates. He's aware that, despite how this all feels to the contrary, he's still lying to Dean.

Dean bends down, pressing Sam into the bed with his whole body. He reaches up and buries a hand in his hair, eyes locking on Sam's, wide and terrifyingly honest.

“Yeah?” he says to Sam, voice low and rough.

His hands creep up without his permission to mold themselves over Dean's back, fingertips meeting along the dip of his spine. It feels stupidly right, just like everything else about him.

“Yeah,” he says, swallowing. His hands slide up, helplessly encouraging Dean as he begins to slowly rock against him. “Yeah, Dean.”

Sam buries his face in his neck, hiding from those eyes. He puts his mouth to use before a senseless apology can slip out and gives himself over to Dean, in every way he can imagine.

After, Sam's half asleep and right back where he was when he woke up to this whole situation. Only thing different is the arm Dean's got slung over him. He's too sleepy and fucked out not to grab his hand and just hold it there against his stomach for a few seconds, never mind that he has the feeling Dean might call him a girl for doing it (if Dean was awake, which he is not) (which is why Sam's doing it).

He stares with half-lidded eyes at the evening sun warming the room's curtains and thinks that he'd stay right here, if he was allowed: in this bed; in this room; with this man.

Eight hours since he woke up with no memories, and everything outside these walls has done its best to make him wonder what manner of world he lives in. The only thing he's been able to count on is Dean, and abruptly, Sam is savagely glad that they had sex. It doesn't serve as any kind of protection, and he still has many lingering questions. But moving forward he at least knows this: he has Dean.

This feeling goes deeper than memory or knowledge. He thinks it might be faith.

His hand tightens around Dean's and then he rolls over and presses a kiss to his temple. It's almost chaste, innocent. Then Dean stirs and hums and opens his eyes, alighting on Sam immediately and smiling slow and wide and, well.

It stops being innocent again, pretty quick.

* * *

They're lazing around after round three, and Sam's starting to guiltily think about his laptop and the research he should be doing, when Dean's phone vibrates over on the table with a text.

Dean sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed. He looks over to the phone and then for some reason glances back at Sam. He looks torn, and something in Sam hesitates at the look.

He covers. “You going to get that?”

“Yeah,” Dean says after an almost imperceptible pause. “'Course.”

He gets up and pads over to phone, completely uncaring that he's nude. Sam gives himself ten seconds to appreciate the view before ruthlessly turning away and grabbing for his own clothing.

Dean already sounds different when he next speaks, like he hadn't been laughing and moaning and murmuring Sam's name just ten minutes ago.

“She wants to meet in the western stairwell on floor seven.”

Sam doesn't look at him. “That's – very specific.”

Dean types out a text and waits. A few seconds later he reads the response and elaborates, “Security camera blindspot.”

He can feel his brow furrowing. “Should we be weirded out that she knows that?”

Dean considers this for a second then says decisively: “Nah. Comes with the territory, right?”

Sam shrugs and finishes getting dressed.

 

Dean's oddly subdued as they let themselves out of the room and head for the western stairwell. Sam glances at him as they walk, but he doesn't look back once.

They let themselves out onto the cool echoing cement stairwell and walk up to the seventh floor. The silence, which had felt circumstantial in the hallway, now takes on a greater significance and presence.

Sam finds himself tensing again. The mood is not just his imagination, it's _not_ , because once they're at the seventh floor landing and Maria's not yet there, Dean sighs and paces a few steps and says:

“Look, Sam,” and now he's got to think Dean's figured it out, “I know this isn't the best time but – I think we should talk.”

He plays dumb and shrugs. “Sure.” His carefully constructed facade is startled out of place when Dean's own expression collapses.

His shoulders sag and his hand comes up to rub the back of his neck awkwardly. “Okay, look. I need you to believe me here when I tell you that what I'm about to say is one hundred percent serious. Okay?” His eyes slide away from Sam's. “I don't... actually know you.”

Sam stares.

Dean winces and adds hastily, “That's – _remember_ you, obviously! I mean, I don't remember you. And I'm not trying to be disrespectful of what we have. Clearly we're very close, or whatever. And I'm sure the love runs deep, the passion will burn forever – I mean, hey, you're hot. I can state the obvious, obviously. It's just that, ah, at this _present time_ , I don't, ah – ”

“How long have you been having this problem,” Sam asks through gritted teeth.

Dean smiles hopefully, like that'll help him get away with it. “Since I woke up this morning?”

Sam falls back against the wall, slides down, and drops his head into his hands.

He's aware, through the crushing wave of annoyance and despair, that Dean is hovering at his side, seemingly caught between the warring instincts of comforting him like the boyfriend he's been pretending to be all day, and booking it for the nearest exit.

He gives himself ten seconds to regain his composure, then lifts his head and asks clearly, “Why did you pretend?”

Dean drops the hand that had been creeping closer to Sam's shoulder. He shifts out of his crouch and sits next to him against the wall. Their shoulders are pressed together and it still fills stupidly right.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time. I mean – man wakes up without his memories, he can't be too careful about who he trusts.” He's smiling again, but its smaller and more sincere. Apologetic, even.

Sam sighs and says, very deliberately, “If you hadn't pretended, I wouldn't have felt the need to pretend myself.”

It seems to take a second or two for that to filter through. Then Dean's eyes clear and widen, and he slugs Sam hard in the arm.

Outraged, Sam shoves him. Dean shoves him back, and then Sam tries to jump on him, and the next couple of minutes are spent tussling like morons in the stairwell of this cursed hotel.

They end up in the same position they started in, shoulder to shoulder on the floor against the wall. They're both breathing hard, their clothing slightly worse for wear. The collar of Dean's shirt is pulled out of shape and has exposed Dean's collarbone and the red mark Sam put there only an hour previous.

After a moment, Dean demands, “Why didn't you say anything?”

Sam shoves his hair out of his eyes. “Oh, for – are you _kidding_? What was I supposed to do when I wake up to a strange guy standing over me, acting like he knows me?”

“I was going with the flow, collecting intel,” defends Dean.

“You can't go with the flow when you're _the one making the flow_ , Dean! And since when does collecting intel include sex? I mean,” he says with a sudden spike of dread, “we don't even know that we're dating.”

Out of everything going on, it seems like such a small point, inconsequential in the bigger scheme of things, but this was one of the few supposed facts he thought he could rely on. And _now_ –

“Oh, you loved it.” And before Sam can virtuously protest otherwise, Dean adds, “Dude, yesterday I woke up to a hard-on trying to drill a hole in my spine and a pair of fuzzy handcuffs in a gift bag next to the bed. I think we're pretty safe on that count.”

Sam had forgot about the handcuffs. He shakes his head and says wearily, “Just – do you know how much quicker this all could've been solved if we knew we were both cursed?”

“Tell me about it. Trying to investigate on the sly behind your back was a nightmare.”

Sam nods in silent, rueful agreement. “I suppose another good question is why we're both such suspicious bastards.”

Dean shrugs. “Probably comes with the territory.” He catches Sam's look. “C'mon. With all this freaky shit going down. Don't tell me you didn't notice that we both just took it in stride. Also – the guns. I mean, it's gotta be what we do.”

“You think we're hunters, like she said?”

“Sure as fuck hope so, Sammy,” says Dean. “Because otherwise the boxes we check add up to some seriously messed up answers.”

Sam can't argue with that.

A mere ten seconds later, so close that Sam briefly flashes faint at the potential horror of being discovered while Dean was still trying to twist him into a headlock, Maria walks up the stairs.

“We shouldn't stick around long,” she says quietly as she approaches, when Sam and Dean both stand up.

“You think someone's on the lookout for us working together?” Sam asks.

She shrugs and glances down the stairs. “I've generally found it better to be paranoid and assume the worst. So no more meeting in private rooms.” She looks back at them, serious expression like she knows the answer to her next question: “Were you two able to get out?”

They shake their heads, and Dean briefly tells her what they found out. She predictably doesn't look thrilled, but she doesn't look surprised either.

“I talked to the convention organizers, and they were the same way as the front desk. I tried asking about the deaths last year, and they looked at me like I was crazy, even after I tried showing them the newspaper clipping.”

“Any chance they were faking it?” Dean asks.

She considers it but ultimately shakes her head. “Didn't get that feeling, no. I don't know – I just don't think they're connected.”

Sam says, “What about whoever owns the hotel?”

“That's the next step. One of the dealers I talked to kept going on about how the hotel happens to be on geologic confluence or some crap. Said it amplified energies. That's why they hold the convention here.” She wrinkles her nose. “I'm almost positive he was full of shit, but at this point we might as well follow up every lead.” She runs a tired hand back through her hair and shakes her head. “I hate this case.”

“Rather be taking photos of cheating spouses?” Dean asks with a grin.

“ _Any day._ Are you kidding? Easiest paycheck you'll ever earn in your life.” She glances down the stairs again, and Sam realizes that despite her easy tone, she's tense all over. She's picking up on the same vibes they are, that animal sense that it's not safe out in the open like this.

“Okay, I'm going to makes some more calls and then call it a night,” she says, and Sam quickly asks:

“Do you have anyone on the outside who might be able to scan and send you the hotel blueprints?”

She pauses. “You think the building's design might be something? Like in Ghostbusters?”

“ _Ha_ ,” Dean says under his breath.

Sam bites out a smile and ignores him. “Yeah,” he says, “Kinda like Ghostbusters.”

Her eyes dart between them, nonplussed. She says, “I can ask someone for a favor. If they hit city hall first thing, they might be able to have the blueprints to us early on in the day.” Her shoulders twitch like she wants to check the stairs at her back again. “Look, I'm going to go, okay? I'll text you guys tomorrow. We can meet up in the lounge.”

“That won't be suspicious?” Dean says.

“What, a girl getting a drink with a pair of handsome guys?” She flashes a wink and a good show of a smile. “I think we'll be fine.”

She makes her escape, slipping along the stairwell silently on sneakered feet. They wait a couple minutes before making their own way.

* * *

That night, he dreams of waking up.

He'd been sleeping in a car. It's big and black and comes equipped with an engine with a fuck-you roar, and a brother that is somehow also Dean, because dreams are weird like that sometimes.

It's some time not long before dawn when a state patrol car eases up behind the Impala, sweeping its brights across the fogged windows and awakening them instantly.

 _Stranger danger,_ his brother used to say to him as he pushed him into closets and under beds before answering the door of a thousand hotel rooms across the country. Sam doesn't realize he's said it aloud, _stranger danger_ , until Dean shoots him an odd look.

He rolls down the driver window to greet the officer who has materialized beside the car like a ghost. Through the condensation on the windows, he's an indistinct bulk, the dense middle of him wavering like black smoke, and it feels like a threat.

The world's not supposed to exist when they're in the car like this, at least not until the sun comes back up.

It's still early enough that the officer feels justified in shining his heavy Maglite into the interior of the car, purposefully blinding them. Blinking, Sam thinks _so he's one of those._

“You boys sleep here all night?” the thing wearing a man's face asks.

Sam sees Dean's mouth curl and open, and he jumps in before he can say something that'll get them both shot and ruin the rest of the night.

“Yes, sir.” He leans forward, and the beam switches from his brother to shine fully on him, but he doesn't let his earnest expression waver. “It was getting to be late, and we were a bit lost. Didn't want to be driving unsafe on the road, so we decided to bunk down for few hours.”

The officer doesn't say anything for a long moment, let's them wait it out as he hitches up his belt and goes on studying the car and the two of them. Sam keeps one eye on Dean's slowly tensing shoulders and wonders what the man thinks he sees.

Two vagrants, too big to be sleeping together in a car. Shadows under their eyes and stubble on their cheeks, indeterminate stains on their hard-worn jackets. He's suddenly sure that this – sleeping in the car in the middle of no where with the debris of their last meal at their feet – something they used to pass off as _free spirits_ is now laid bare in the darkness as _no other options_.

Eventually the cop raps his knuckles on the top of the car and casually leans over the window in an obvious display of dominance. “Well. Best for you to be getting on. Sun's coming up. This is private property, you know.”

“Oh, is it?” Dean says, tone like murder.

The officer looks past him and directly at Sam, suddenly dropping all pretense at being a cop. His eyes take on an impossible yellow-edged glint and he says:

“You know better than this, son.”

* * *

Sam wakes up to find himself slumped against a wall. He blinks slowly, looking around in confusion.

He's in a darkened pool room, sitting on the cool tiles in just his boxers and a T-shirt. The floor is hard and uncomfortable against the knob of his ankles. The undersides of his bare thighs are cold.

Dean is sitting beside him. He's got his arms on his upraised knees, and he staring at the unbroken pane of the pool, the underwater lights throwing up a blue cast that makes him look very pale. In that alien light, he looks older, weary.

Sam thinks it's strange how quickly he's grown used to his face.

“Uh,” he says. He's a little taken aback at the way his voice sounds, harsh and too loud.

Dean's eyes snap to his instantly, quiet repose chased away. He leans forward. “Sam? You okay?”

Sam finds the clock on the wall. “Did I get whammied or something? Again?” He feels a stab of panic at the idea that he might lose more memories. It's bad enough that he's lost Dean once already.

“Nah. You were sleepwalking,” Dean says, relaxing back on his hands. He looks a little relieved, maybe. “Apparently that's something you do. Creepy as hell, by the way.”

“And I came here?” He looks again around the empty pool room.

Dean rubs the back of his neck. “You were pretty determined to get moving, and I wasn't about to stand and argue with a zombie in the middle of the hallway. So I, uh, kind of herded you in here. Didn't want to see what would happen if we went somewhere with people.” His mouth quirks. “Though it woulda been hilarious to see you standing in the casino in your boxers.”

Sam looks down at the smooth surface of the water. “What if I'd fallen in?”

Now Dean looks a little offended. “Dude, I wasn't going to let you fall in.” He considers this. “Besides, you'd probably wake up before you drowned. Deep end's only got a few inches on you.”

“Why didn't _you_ just wake me up?” Sam pulls his legs up, setting the soles of his feet on the floor and then pushes himself all the way up to standing. It seems to take a long time, because he's so tired, the feeling dragging at his limbs like waterlogged clothing. His injured ankle hasn't liked the midnight sojourn and registers a complaint once he's on his feet.

Dean follows him up. “I don't know how this shit works. What if it gave you a heart attack or something?”

“Pretty sure that's a myth.” Sam nearly cracks a bone with his yawn and looks over at him. “Can we go back to bed?”

“Look at you acting like it's my fault we're out here.” Dean shakes his head. He brushes a hand over Sam's hip, like he's reassuring himself that Sam's all there. He nods to the door. “C'mon.”

He follows Dean out of the pool and into the warm lighting of the carpeted hallway. He watches the flex of the other man's shoulder blades under his thin shirt like it was a signpost on a state highway and he's been lost for hours. Eventually his gaze slips down, catches briefly on the gun Dean's got tucked in his waistband, then slips a little further and stays there.

He's humming something, and it takes several seconds for Sam to place it.

“Oo de lally, oo de lally, golly what a day,” he says, just to see if he's right.

“I'm the fox,” Dean says quickly. When he glances back at Sam, he's grinning a little, fond. “You're the bear, obviously.”

And if Dean isn't familiar with certain terminology in the gay community, well, this moment will have to be reserved for Sam's private amusement.

Then it's back into the room, and the slight tension that comes with being exposed lifts at last. Sam heads straight for the bed, pitches into with a relieved groan and kicks at the covers until he's wriggled underneath. The sheets beneath his skin are cool, and he wonders how long they've been gone.

The sink in the bathroom runs as Dean gets a drink of water. Then the light in Sam's periphery clicks off and a second later Dean's weight is dipping the other side of the mattress. He slings an arm around his stomach and hitches himself in close until he's a warm line all down Sam's back.

“In case you go wandering off again,” he mutters into the boney edge of Sam's shoulder.

Sam falls back asleep with the soft flutter of breath tickling his skin. Earlier he'd wished that he knew what they were to each other, but he's drowsy on the feeling in his gut that Dean's _his_ and just about ready to move on to a better question.

* * *

Sam wakes up for the second day in a row knowing something is wrong. Not wrong like yesterday – he remembers that, at least – but definitely _wrong_. The problem isn't immediately apparent, only that it has managed to penetrate the former sanctity of their room.

He's on his stomach, left leg rucked up to tilt him against Dean. He can feel the other man's arm curled around his back. Nothing about this should be tripping his alarms.

He turns his head slowly, tosses his head against the pillow to clear the hair from his view, and blinks up at Dean, who is sitting up against the headboard.

He's staring blankly at the opposite wall, but at the shift of Sam's back muscles, he looks down at him, disturbed expression briefly chased away in favor of something Sam wishes he could grab and tuck away somewhere safe from memory curses.

Sam's only response to that look is to curl his hand around Dean's thigh and hold on, fingertips rubbing at the soft inside skin. “What's happened?” he asks, voice scratchy.

A strange look flits over Dean's face – a strange, wary recognition – and he says quietly, “There's been another murder.”

“ _What_ – when _?_ ” Sam sits up fast. Dean's arm slides off his back like it was never meant to be there anyway.

Free of Sam's clinging, Dean now shuffles to the edge of the mattress. He speaks turned away, “Around 3, from what I can tell.”

His memories of last night are already kind of hazy, not from drink but from something almost deeper – exhaustion and infatuation and this whole mindfuck that he's been tripping on for the past day. But he knows what time it was when he went to sleep.

“That was around the time I was sleepwalking.”

Dean angles a skeptical look at him over his shoulder. “I doubt there's a connection. Sleepwalking's probably just some freakish habit of yours.”

Despite his tone, Sam can tell he's clearly bothered by the idea that they were walking around while this was going on.

He scrubs at his face. “Okay, uh – how'd you find out about this? Can we go see the room, or – ?”

“Maria texted. Room's already been closed off, but she caught a neighbor before they went freaky no-nothing. Don't have pictures but the blood splatter sounded similar.”

His forehead creases. “By similar, you mean they said it was just – all over, right?”

“ _Probably_ , Sam,” he snaps. “Didn't ask, but I'm assuming the person didn't tell Maria that they recognized some old Slavic – ”

“Slavonic,” Sam says, before he can stop himself.

Dean gives him a look. “What-the-fuck- _ever_ , man. At this point, we just have to assume it was more of the same, okay?”

Sam nods, more to end the conversation than anything else. He sits up himself, swivels out opposite from Dean, making them a mirror set. For some reason everything feels different than it had last night. More complicated.

He wonders bleakly how much of their rapport from the previous day was actually just them just pretending to know each other.

After a few more seconds of this strangely fraught silence, Sam asks carefully, “So what's the plan?”

There's no immediate answer, and he risks a glance over to find Dean down at the floor, mouth a weirdly regretful slant. He's rubbing the back of his neck.

“Maria wants to meet and figure this shit out. I think she was expecting a longer timetable than this.”

Sam nods. There's no way to tell if the spacing of the murders held any significance – but if they did matter, the clock was already clicking resolutely down on the third.

He says, “So a working breakfast, then?”

Another long pause, but Sam can't figure this one out – he looks over at Dean and finds him glaring.

“ _What_?” he says, baffled.

“It's 10:15, Sam. We missed breakfast.”

“Oh.” He considers this. “Well – does the lounge serve food?”

 

The lounge does not serve food, exactly.

“I'm not sure bar pretzels are an adequate base for that,” Sam says, watching Dean heft the large bloody mary that has just been placed in front him.

“Who needs a base?” Dean stirs the drink with his celery stick and then takes a pointed bite from it. “Celery, tomato – that's two vegetables right there. This is practically healthy.” He takes a drink and makes a slight face. “Clamato, actually. So there's the protein,” he finishes, philosophical to the end.

Sam shakes his head and reaches for his own coffee.

Maria arrives a few minutes later, holding a laptop of her own and a sheaf of papers. She dumps the latter unceremoniously in front of them and sets her computer down with a little more care.

She nods at the papers. “Fax from my friend in city hall. I hope they mean something more to you than they did to me.”

Dean sets down his bloody mary and reaches for the papers. Together, he and Sam sort and arrange them. After a couple minutes of studying the diagram of the hotel, Sam still hasn't seen anything jump out at him matching the symbols he saw in the bloodspatter or etched into the cornerstones, and goes back to his own his laptop.

Yesterday while researching the bloodspatter, he'd discovered a couple surprising things about himself – for one, he apparently knows Latin and has a passing familiarity with Greek. This latter is the closest he comes to recognizing anything in Slavonic, but he doesn't hold out much hope for reverse-engineering St. Cyril's work from the 9th century in however many hours they have left before the third death.

Sam sighs and rubs his eyes in frustration. After a few moments he feels his coffee cup get picked up and glances over to in time to see Dean refill it and set it back down, nudging it towards him.

“We'll figure this out,” he tells him. Sam tries on a smile and nods.

A few minutes later, Maria gets sick of eyeing Dean's bloody mary and goes to the bar to get one for herself. As soon as she's out of earshot, Dean leans forward across the papers he's been staring at.

“Look – what happens if we force it? Just make a run for the doors and don't stop, no matter what?”

Sam's shoulders twitch at a sense memory of how it had felt to be within ten feet of those doors. “Leaving aside that I'm not sure if we even _can_ force it,” he says, ignoring Dean's wordless scoff, “What if it does something? How do we know we won't make this memory loss permanent?”

“We don't even know if they're connected.”

“What are the odds of two separate freaky things happening in the same hotel?” he counters.

“At a _magic_ convention?” is Dean's next parry.

But Sam is immovable. “It's too big a risk.”

Dean throws up his arms but relents.

“Anything on those markings on the building?” Maria asks when she gets back to the table. She is carrying a bloody mary in a massive German stein glass that immediately makes Dean narrow his eyes jealously. Sam can almost hear his plaintive _I didn't know they came in that size_.

He takes a smile-tempering drink of his own coffee. “Not really. I'm pretty sure they are supposed to serve as a boundary definition, but as for _what_ – no clue.” He's been without his memories for twenty-four hours, but this is the first thing that's made him feel actually out of his depth. He doesn't care for the feeling.

“What if we just deface the cornerstones?” ask Maria. “Break the boundary, break the spell?”

“It could work like that,” agrees Sam, “or it could unleash it, whatever _it_ is. We just don't know.” They didn't know _anything_.

She slumps back in her chair and a black silence reigns the table for a few minutes.

Dean's been staring at a cross-section map of the hotel for ten minutes when he straightens up a little and, without looking over, snaps his fingers in Sam's face, a scant two inches from his eyes.

Sam flinches back and raises his eyebrows at Dean incredulously. Maria glances at him quickly and plainly stifles a smirk.

Dean pays no attention to any of it. “Sam, read me the rooms from last year's attacks.”

“We weren't able to find them all – ”

“Just – read me what we got.”

Sam lists them off, half his attention on Dean as he marks the rooms on the map. Without asking, he flips a page and reads off the attack from the year before as well and ignores the stupid twinge of pleasure he gets when Dean slips him a small smile. Jackass still snapped his fingers in his face.

Dean finishes by marking the rooms from this year's attacks. When he's done, Sam and Maria lean forward and watch as he considers the points for a moment and then, with unswerving confidence, begins to connect them.

They all stare at the resulting image, an angled heptacle cleaving the hotel across seven floors.

Maria transfers her stare to Dean. “How'd you know to do that? I mean, how'd you even _see_ it?”

Dean shrugs like it's no big deal.

“Pattern recognition,” Sam murmurs, feeling a surge of pride.

“Sure, let's go with that,” Dean says easily. He splays his hand over the map. “Question is, what does it mean?”

“It means should check out Room 418.” Sam reaches across Dean and taps the map, right in the center of the heptacle. The three of them consider it for a moment.

Maria sits back and reaches for her handbag. Standing, she swings it over her shoulder and looks down at them. “If we're going into the middle of that thing, I'm going to arm myself a bit better.”

“Detective,” Dean says, sitting back with a smile. “I like the way you think.”

 

“Do you think you were some kind of, you know, G-Man? Before hunting, I mean,” Dean asks back up in their room.

Sam looks over at him sharply, wondering if he's remembering something or just making fun of him. “What do you mean?”

“Just a vibe I get, that's all.” He gives a one-shouldered shrug. “It's only sometimes.”

Right. “Well, what about you? If I was a – ” he refuses to say _G-Man,_ “federal agent or whatever, what do you think you were?” Because there was no way Dean worked for the government, not with that leather jacket and necklace and flashy gun.

Dean's mouth curls. “No way was I a fed.” He glances at Sam and the smile grows into something more forgivable. He offers, “Man, I had three IDs in my wallet, all with different names. I don't know – maybe I was a cowboy.”

This is perhaps the last answer Sam is expecting, and the surprise blows out of him, half-laughing. “A _cowboy_ – ?”

Dean waves a hand. “Okay, not like with a horse, or whatever. But you know, a nice set of wheels, going where the work takes me. No rules....”

“That's not a cowboy, Dean, that's a Bon Jovi song.”

Dean turns on him with a schooling finger. “Hey, Bon Jovi rocks – on occasion.”

Sam wishes he had a recording of this; he suspects it would make great blackmail material for when they get their memories back. Because _Bon Jovi_ , seriously.

“Do you think it's weird that we don't have holsters?” is Dean's next question. He's stolen Sam's gun and is checking it over like he doesn't trust that Sam knows what he's doing. “I think it's weird. I don't feel like the kind of guy who doesn't practice basic gun safety.”

Something about his phrasing strikes Sam as odd, but he doesn't have the time now to stop and try to follow the thread because Dean's tucking the gun into his waistband and taking the opportunity to cop a very heavy, obvious feel.

Sam gives him a look, but Dean just smiles blandly back and waves him towards the door.

On the fourth floor, Maria is already waiting for them. She's leaning against the wall, leg kicked up and back, sneaker tapping against the wallpaper.

“I guess we're not worrying about surveillance anymore,” Sam says. He keeps his voice low so as to not be overheard from the rooms.

She shrugs unhappily at him, shoving off from the wall. “That was before I knew this whole thing might be over in the next four hours.” She shakes her head. “One way or another, anyway.”

It really wasn't any time at all; Sam feels anxiety spike in his stomach. Together, the three of them turn and regard the door to 418.

“Think we should kick it down?” Dean asks after a moment, chewing on his lip.

Sam casts him a skeptical look. “Casino hotel like this, the door has to be reinforced.”

He bends his head carefully against the door, in case he can hear anything from the room inside, but this effort is stymied by Dean, who says, “Okay, genius, what's your bright idea? Gonna tell me you know how to pick a card reader?”

“My god, you guys bicker worse than my two sons,” Maria says, giving them both a disbelieving look. “How long have you been together, exactly?”

Dean's smirk is all for Sam. “Somedays it feels like I've known Sammy here my whole life.”

“Don't call me that,” he says reflexively, half his attention still on trying to hear through the door. Nothing. He draws back, frustrated.

“How about we try knocking, see where that gets us,” says Maria, but then she rushes to stop Sam as he lifts his hand. She shoos Sam and Dean to the side and, bemused, they obediently step back.

“Trust me. Two big, strange guys knock unexpectedly at your hotel door, no way you're opening. I don't care how pretty you are.”

“Goes to show how stereotypes can mislead. You're way scarier than me,” says Dean.

Maria flashes him a grin. “Damn straight.” Then she lets up on the expression, settling into a more neutral friendliness as she faces the door and gives it a heavy, slow knock.

A few seconds go by, during which Dean and Sam press themselves out of view from the peephole's fisheye view. Eventually the door opens a crack, and a gaunt, middle-aged man looks warily out.

“Hi,” Maria begins, “Sorry to bother you, but – ”

Dean swings into view. “But you don't happen to know anything about some human sacrifice going on around here, do you?” And then he smiles at the man, seemingly oblivious to the horrified glares Sam and Maria send his way.

As for the man – he's gone dead white. But he isn't trying to close the door again. Instead, he fumbles for the chain, the metal rattling as he shoves it back with trembling hands. Sam notices his fingers are thin and knobbed. Almost skeletal.

“Are you here to stop it?” he whispers, looking at Dean with a terrible hope as he opens the door wide in reckless welcome. “Are you here to kill me?”

 

It's just about right, Sam thinks, that they came here looking for a culprit and only found another victim.

It fits with everything else going on – the sense that there is something very wrong in this hotel, something just out of reach. Identical hallways lined with identical doors and behind every one a person with a problem.

They're inside the room, which is a mess of crumpled bedding and stale air. Sam suggests the man sit down, and hovers without touching in case he needs help – because he looks like he needs help. He shakes badly as he lowers himself into the stiff armchair in the corner and then spends too long straightening his cardigan.

“What's your name?” Sam asks him, to cover the awkward moment.

He doesn't look up. “Alan.”

“Okay. Alan, my name is Sam. These are my partners Dean and Maria.”

The man still doesn't look up. Sam's sympathetic look can't do much good if he doesn't look up.

Sam grabs a second armchair and drags it closer, sits in it so he's not looming. He leans forward over his knees and tries again.

“Alan, can you tell us why you thought we're here?” Best not to say _kill you_ , he figures.

“The deaths, right?” he says dully. “Doesn't seem like so much to ask that you take care of me while you're at it.” These words are muttered directly at his lap.

Sam can't help but dart a glance at Dean then, who shakes his head.

“You know about the deaths,” Maria says. “Most people in this hotel seem to forget about them soon after they happen. You know who's responsible?”

Alan's thin shoulders hunch forward. He's silent for a long moment, then: “Yeah. My dad.”

“Where's your dad now?” Dean asks.

Alan angles a look up at them. “Are you going to kill _him_?” Spoken in the tones of something being fundamentally unfair.

“We're going to stop him,” Sam says firmly.

Alan's gaze returns to his lap.

Sam tries not to let his frustration take over, but they have so little _time_. He's about to try again, when Alan starts talking.

“The spell takes three years to complete. Three years, nine lives,” he says, detached. “He's done it for himself at least a couple times – I don't really know, it's not something he ever really talked to me about. I was twelve the first time.” He rubs his hands together, fretful. “I never thought about it – didn't want to, because who wants their dad to die? I felt – lucky, having him around. By the time I turned forty, a lot of my friends had already lost their parents. Then I got sick.”

It's not a revelation; one can tell as soon as one looked at him that Alan is very sick. It's in the pallor and laxity of his skin, the unnatural protuberance of bone that shouldn't be so sharp, even in a thin man. The room smells of sickness.

“Dad's spell doesn't cure cancer, I'm pretty sure about that. I've spent my life reading his old books. And even if it did – how am I supposed to live, knowing what happened to all those people?”

“Why didn't you do something before?” Dean demands. “This is the third year, isn't it? Six people died and you never thought to put a stop to it?”

“I tried slitting my wrists, does that count?” Alan asks him sharply. For a brief moment, Sam sees what he must have been like before he got sick.

Dean isn't impressed. “Clearly not, since he's still killing people.”

“Dean,” Sam says.

“What, Sam? It seems pretty clear to me – he's his family, he's just as responsible for whatever evil crap his dad's done as if he'd done it himself.”

Alan shakes his head. “You don't understand – you think I haven't tried convincing him to stop? Nothing will make him stop. _Nothing_ – I was up every night for months, puking up my stomach lining and begging him.” He laughs, ragged. “And even now, he's made sure I can't stop it. He put this – this spell on the hotel. Made sure I can't leave.”

“Not just you,” Maria murmurs, and Alan nods.

“Yeah. Not just me.” Alan adds bitterly, “Easier when your sacrifices can't unexpectedly check out early.”

They don't have time for the luxury of his anger and self-recrimination. Sam asks him, trying to inject the urgency he feels into his voice, “Alan, you need to tell us how we can find him. We will stop him, but we don't have much time. The third – ”

“Is soon, yes. Very soon,” he says vaguely.

“We think we know which room he'll target,” Sam says, because they can reverse-plot it from Dean's diagram. “If we get whoever's in there out – will that end the spell? Will it be over?”

Alan shakes his head. “Same spell Dad used on the hotel, he – the occupant won't be able to leave the room. It's probably already in effect. Dad doesn't like to take chances.”

Shit. Plan B. “Then where is he? Alan, where's your dad?”

“Are you going to kill him?” he asks again.

“No,” Maria says.

“Maybe,” Dean says.

She stirs uneasily, glancing around. “Hold up, no one said anything about killing anyone.”

“He's murdered _eight_ people – ” Dean says incredulously.

“So we _stop_ him, get him – arrested, or something. I'm a freaking _private investigator_ , Dean, not some vigilante. This isn't what I'm getting paid for.”

Sam looks over in time to catch Dean's nonplussed expression. He doesn't know what disturbs him more: Dean's admittance of the possibility of killing someone, or Sam's ready agreement. It's a whole new level of fucked up, even on top of the rest of it.

He looks back to Alan. “We're going to stop him. That's what matters.”

Alan meets his eyes. Sam doesn't try to pull the sympathetic look on him, just lets him see Sam's determination. Sometimes honest.

“Lower level two,” he says at last. “He holes himself down there, does all his casting from a central storage room.”

The other two, still prickly with each other and the situation, head for the door. Sam nods at Alan and begins to stand – then he stops. Looks at him, curled inward on himself in that chair. Wonders what it cost him to give his father up like that.

“What will happen to you, after we stop him?” he asks Alan quietly.

“If the spell breaks, the protections on my body should be lifted.” A close-mouthed slant not unlike a smile crosses the man's face, and he tilts it up so that Sam can't mistake his meaning. “My razor blade should suit just fine.”

 

Sam leaves the room and finds Dean waiting for him in the hallway alone.

“Where's Maria?” he asks.

Dean doesn't look at him as they begin walking down the hallway. “She's gone to knock down the final door. Says she'd rather spend the next couple hours forcing her way past the spell on the room than trying to kill someone.”

Something in his held away voice makes Sam think that's not all she said, but they don't have time to have a heart-to-heart about it. He's on Dean's side on this, that's all that matters. They can fret about their questionable morals and potential list of kills after this is over.

* * *

For lack of any better ideas, they head back to their room to look over the blueprints for the lower level and cobble together a plan.

Sam's stomach twinges as he shuffles through the papers and arranges them out on the small table. He remembers he has yet to really eat anything today, and is about to ask Dean how he's feeling with just the bloody mary in him. He gets as far as, “Hey, Dean,” before glancing over and finding Dean staring across the room at him, stricken.

He's up and across the room immediately, ignoring the warning pain in his ankle. “What, what is it?” he asks, reaching out to grip his arms. Dean jerks back, out of reach, and Sam frowns.

He won't meet his eyes. There's a muscle jumping in his jaw; for a insane second Sam thinks he's about to get punched. But the moment passes and then Dean is fumbling for his hand and pressing his cellphone into it like one passing off a hot potato, or maybe an unpinned grenade.

Sam looks down. Reads the short text from someone named _Bobby_ and feels the bottom drop out of his stomach.

Unthinking and automatic, Sam says, “Okay, so we misread that.”

A harsh, ugly sound issues from Dean's mouth. “Gee, Sam. You think?”

He opens and closes his mouth several times, at a loss for what to say. He feels strangely weightless.

Dean's saying, “Oh, shit. Oh, _Jesus_ ,” and bending over, hands on his knees. He looks like there isn't enough air in the room, certainly not enough between him and Sam, who can only stand by uselessly, sure that Dean wouldn't want him to touch him now, not even to pat his back.

Eventually he says, because he can't think of anything else that's safe, “You had another number in your phone and didn't tell me?”

Dean, who'd turned and started drifting backwards, putting distance between them like a few feet might make a difference, might change the fact that they are – that they _are_ – anyway, Dean wheels around and snaps, “Fuck, is that _really_ your first question?”

“It just seems like a bit much,” Sam points out carefully. “I mean, it's one thing that we both lost our memories, but you had a second lead and didn't follow it – ”

“You're saying this is _my_ fault?” Dean's face is white now, but it isn't outrage on his face so much as a half-terrified kind of dread. It's all going wrong, and Sam doesn't know how to comfort him, how to make this better.

“No! Of course not.” He tosses the phone on the bed and sinks down after it, putting his head in hands. He presses his fingers to his eyes until the pressure tries to warn him off. “Look, I'm just trying to _understand_ – ”

Dean says rapidly, “Area code's halfway across the damn country, it's not like he could do anything from there. And anyway, the man sounded like a freaking geriatric when I called.” His eyes rove over the room like he's searching for an exit. He licks his lips and tries again, “I didn't, I didn't know how well I knew him, whether he was some kind of _boss_ or something, whether telling him might fuck something _else_ up that I currently know nothing about – ” he cuts himself off there, and surely they are both thinking the same thing now, that they managed to fuck something up anyway.

Sam relents, swallowing against the lump in his throat. He even puts his hands up in a show of acquiescence before dragging them through his hair. He can't blame Dean for this – for all he knows, he would've done the same thing in his place.

There's a long, awful silence.

It's not fair, he thinks dumbly. They look _nothing_ alike.

“Maybe it's not by blood,” he attempts, voice thready, but Dean gestures sharply as if to cut the words off before they reach his ears.

“I don't see how this situation gets any better by slapping an asterisk on it,” he says.

Sam's knee-jerk impulse is to argue the point, because of _course_ it would be better, but he can't bring himself to do it. They hold another silence for several long minutes, neither of them looking directly at the other.

Almost worse than everything else is the way he felt when he first read the text and realized what it meant.

As unthinkable as it should be after the past day and a half that they've had together – when it comes down to it, Sam's known since he woke up that he wasn't a man alone in the world. This revelation is less earth-shattering than it is _grounding_ , and how fucked up must Sam be, to feel like this?

After an eternity, Dean clears his throat. When he speaks again, he sounds like a man who's been shot and is trying to hide how bad it is from the rest of the group. “Okay. Well, this situation won't get better until we get our damn memories back. And we're on the clock with the murders, so – priorities.”

And suddenly they go from being partners to a _situation_. A situation that isn't even top priority.

It's an ugly word, vagueness concealing all sorts of uncertainties and discomfort. It's not the right label for him and Dean (the text proves that much), it doesn't match up with what he feels when he looks at him. But he thinks he needs to stop making choices that the man he used to be will have to live with.

That the _brothers_ they are will have to live with.

 

Dean doesn't talk as they leave the room.

He doesn't talk as they go down to the ground floor and, after a surreptitious look around, slip through a discreet staff-only side door. He doesn't talk as they split up in the kitchens and he palms a keycard from one of the junior staff. He doesn't talk when he meets Sam at the service elevator at the end of the hallway.

But then, Sam doesn't talk either.

The elevator closes them in and there's no where to look but straight ahead. There is no reflection to stare at, nothing to give Sam a hint about where they stand in relation to each other.

When it opens on the second lower level, a familiar pressure greets them like a punch. They both involuntarily take a step back, and Sam hears Dean curse. Together, they stagger out of the elevator before the doors can close again, but that's as far as they can make it; Sam slumps back against the wall, breathing hard. He hears more than sees Dean do the same right next to him.

The boundary spell has been put on the door to the storage room at the end of the hallway. Sam can feel it from here. Fucking of course.

It hits him, the last terrible realization in a long line of them stretching back to this morning – there's no way in. No way to stop the third murder. They stand there a moment, held motionless and dumbstruck.

“Do you think they know?” Sam asks. “The person in that room up there – do you think they've tried leaving the room, or – or are they not really thinking about it, like all those people in the lounge yesterday?”

Dean doesn't answer. When Sam glances at him, he's staring at the door at the end of the hall as if he hasn't heard a word of what he said.

This frees Sam from having to worry about the reception his next words will get. “We should still kill him. When he comes out that door.”

But Dean's apparently not yet ready to resign himself to revenge, because he says, “I think the boundary can be forced.”

It's taking a lot of effort to not turn around right this second and get back in the elevator. He remembers what it felt like the last time they tried to force their way past the spell. But somehow when he looks at Dean's face, he believes him.

He turns to face the door at the end – steeling himself, which turns out to be a mistake, because he's guarding the wrong front.

Dean's quick and Sam's unprepared – it's the only reason he reacts too slow as Dean turns on him and twists his arm from his side. The click of the fuzzy handcuffs from the swag bag is loud in the bare hallway.

Sam stares dumbly down at his wrist, now cuffed to one of the pipes running from floor to ceiling. It's automatic to tug at it, but there's no give; the handcuffs aren't that kind of a toy.

Dean hasn't stopped for the blowback – he is already halfway down the hall by the time Sam adjusts enough to shout after him, “What the fuck – Dean, stop!”

He turns to look back a him. “Sorry, Sam,” he says, not bothering to even pretend to mean it.

“Don't do this.” Sam shakes his head, wishing he could reach out and grab him. He tugs again at the handcuffs. “Damn it – Dean, don't. Just – don't, c'mon man. Let me out of these, we'll go in together.”

Dean looks away, uncomfortable. Blood has started to gather and trickle down to his upper lip, and he impatiently swipes at it, doesn't look down to see the bright smear on his hand. He directs his next words to the wall. “I don't know what kind of brother I am,” Dean says. “But I think I'd be a pretty sorry one if I let you do this.”

 _What kind of brother do you think_ I _am_ , Sam doesn't bother shouting back. Instead, slow and deliberate like he isn't panicking: “Dean? I'm serious. Get back here.”

Dean manages a shaky grin, and he's not even talking to Sam anymore, not really. “Knew soon as I woke up beside you yesterday morning. I knew. Even then.”

“What does that mean? You knew _what_?” he asks, to keep him talking, keep him from walking further from him.

But Dean's not to be distracted. “See you on the other side, Sam.”

He yanks on the cuffs until the pipe groans. “Swear to God, I will kill you myself.” He pounds on the wall. “Dean!”

He turns and leaves, decisive like a bullet chambered.

* * *

It feels too familiar by half – the black, impotent fury, the way every muscle in his body tenses like preparing to lash out _if only he had a target_. The one precious connection he has to a life he doesn't even remember is gone, in danger, and Sam alone is expected to just put up with it?

And this is how he finds the last, most important piece of the puzzle that is Sam Whatever the Fuck His Last Name Is; down under all his reasoning and instincts, past the Latin conjugations and keen eye, at the base of all of it – Sam _believes_.

He falls heavily to his knees, the cuff jangling as it slides roughly down the pipe. His hands come up almost too late to absorb the impact. He pays all of it no mind. Like countless desperate petitioners before him, he bows his head until it's damn near touching the floor and he throws out into that occupied darkness beyond his mind the most terrifying word in any human tongue: _please._

He breathes. In and out.

He can practically taste the floor.

In and out.

 _Please_.

In

and

out.

_Please._

God doesn't speak to him. But something else does.

He keeps his eyes closed as it brushes up carefully against his mind, like a pastor's warm hand taking his own in a firm clasp, folding over and encasing it.

_Sam. Sam, Sammy. Hello, what are you doing?_

_Who are you?_ he thinks after a long taut moment. It would probably be more accurate or useful to ask _what are you_ , but that seems rude.

_...a friend, Sam, is all. An old friend. What are you doing? Have you changed your mind?_

Sam feels like he's going insane. _I don't understand._

The consciousness falls silent then, but he can still feel its presence. He wonders if it will dissipate if he opens his eyes.

 _This is about Dean, isn't it._ It sounds resigned.

_You know Dean?_

_I don't talk to him._

Sam doesn't understand that either. Given a choice, why wouldn't anyone choose Dean? Immediately after he thinks this, he receives the overwhelming impression that the entity would have rolled its eyes, had it eyes to roll.

_So you know us? Me?_

_I know you better than anyone else in the world and all of time. Sam._

_Oh_ . He breathes, in and out. _Ah, okay._

_You're trying to get your memories back._

Sam's body shudders hard there on the floor and his mentally lunges forward. _Yes, yes, god,_ please _._

The voice goes sulky. _Not a god. God's a deadbeat. But I suppose you'll learn that in a couple years._ And then it must feel the way panicked confusion jumps in his brain, because it abruptly switches tack.

_If you accept this, you'll get much more than what you think is missing._

_What does that mean?_

_I took something for you, years ago. For safe-keeping. Something that was hurting you. It's been trickling back – you can't dam anything forever. But if you complete this cleanse, you'll get it all._

Sam feels a shiver of trepidation. _Was is it bad?_ The feeling only grows when the voice doesn't immediately answer.

 _You were hurting when I took it, and its absence gave you a chance at a normal life._ It pauses and then, almost unwilling: _Dean would like it if you had it back._

 _Then what's the problem?_ he asks impatiently.

_It's going to hurt you both in the end._

Sam pounds the hard slick floor with his open palm, because of course, of course it fucking will. He screws his eyes even tighter shut. _I don't care_ he says at last, because in that moment, he doesn't.

The voice goes silent. It stays that way for long enough to make Sam nervous that he's scared it off by being – ungrateful, or something. Then, after a few seconds, he gets the distinct impression that it's... fidgeting.

 _Well?_ he ventures, trying to gentle his own voice. He relaxes his hand against the floor. He breathes, in and out.

 _Oh, it's no use_ , it says at last. Plainly irritated. _Trying to turn one Winchester from another is a fool's errand._

Winchester. Sam grasps the name like a medallion. _So you'll do it? You'll help me?_

 _Oh, Sam._ The voice is almost sorrowful. _I'll always help_ you _._

* * *

Sam Winchester wakes up on the hard floor, heart pounding and furious. He quickly searches his pockets for something to pick the cuffs with and, finding nothing, neatly dislocates his thumb to slide them off.

It doesn't improve his mood, but at least it wasn't his gun hand.

 

He's moving quickly, now, and thinking more rapidly.

Dean will be near useless, if he even made it all the way to the casting site. Fighting a compulsion like the one activated over the hotel is like gnawing through one's own limb. With his memories, he might have been able to swing it – but without them, Sam has to operate on the assumption that he's been completely incapacitated by the witch.

He doesn't know how much time he has, so taking the elevator back up to the ground floor is nothing short of torture. He's never going without a boot knife again (Dean will be insufferable).

He ignores the looks he gets as he strides through the kitchen, in too much of a hurry to bother with what it must look like, a tall man out of uniform snatching a paring knife from the nearest block.

The service elevator doors have barely closed on him again before he's carving the sigils from the building cornerstones into the tops of his hands. It's a longshot. He isn't familiar with Slavonic casting and isn't sure that the spell will recognize like for like in the sigils and let him pass. But it's all he has to work with on short notice.

He thinks grimly – even if this doesn't work, one way or another, he's getting through that door at the end of the hallway. He takes his gun out, so he can be ready to shoot even if he's lightheaded from the compulsion.

The elevator opens onto the lower level and he steps out like it's nothing. So at least there's that.

He raises his gun and rushes towards the door of the storage room. He's not thinking about his bum ankle or the hotel or saving a stranger in a room somewhere above his head. The only thing he cares about is getting his brother out of that room.

The door is unlocked; the witch didn't expect anyone to beat the compulsion.

Sam edges into the room, ducking behind a solid stack of boxed linens. He peers around the stacks corner.

Dean is on floor, his hands and feet loosely bound. The bottom half of his face is streaked in blood, and his eyes keep fluttering like he's near passing out – but he's alive.

The witch – Alan's father – is lighting a candle in the middle of his casting circle. He's moving carefully but quickly, like maybe he senses this time isn't going to go as easily as the rest. He must be thinking about how close he is to saving his son.

Sam raises his gun alongside the wall of cardboard, sets his feet, and shoots the witch in the back of the head.

Dean jerks and yells, his eyes flying wide. He shoves himself across the floor a foot or two, instinctively moving away from the body as it arcs and falls over the casting circle. It knocks the candle over, and the small flames is extinguished in a pool of spilled hot wax.

Sam waits another second and, when nothing else in the room moves, he comes out from the behind the stack and crosses the room. He bends and unties Dean, ignoring the way he jerks a little in surprise and stares at Sam.

He helps Dean to his feet. The compulsion should be broken, but habit forces him to checks his nosebleed. He tries to check his pupils, but Dean waves him off, transferring his stare down to the body at their feet.

“Well, I guess that's certainly one way to take care of it.” He's watching the growing pool of blood. Sam drops his hands and watches his bowed head. He almost forgot that Dean still doesn't have his memories.

“He was going to kill you,” he hears himself say.

“Hey, I'm not complaining.”

“Maybe you should be,” Sam says sharply. Because all he can think is how Dean would be reacting right now, standing over a dead human body. _You'd look at me, worried and trying like hell not to show it._

“...You're different.” Dean searches his face, and Sam just stands there and lets him. After a moment, his eyes widen fractionally. “You got your memories back. Didn't you.”

Sam doesn't know what he sees – a shadow in his eyes, maybe, or a different weight in the way he carries his shoulders. Or maybe he's looking for that man he briefly knew and not finding him.

“Yeah,” he says. He doesn't know what to do with his hands.

“How?”

“Spell preemption.” He lifts his hands to show Dean the bloody sigils. “I didn't know if it would work, but – I guess the boundary spell superseded the first.” He's talking mostly nonsense now, the words coming without deliberation; this is how naturally Sam lies to his brother. He shrugs at Dean. “And I was right.”

Dean's eyes drift away, to the side, and Sam can already see him thinking that over, poking at his own mind and wondering just how much knowledge is missing.

He tells him, “this whole case woulda gone different if we hadn't been cursed.”

And he had been thinking _because we usually know what we're doing_ , but too late he sees the second reading, the one that's making Dean bark out a laugh and turn away. Because, yeah, they probably wouldn't have fucked during this case if they had their memories.

He watches Dean consider the wall for a fraught few seconds, but is still somehow unprepared for when Dean turns back around and predictably says, eyes shuttered, “Well, what are we waiting for? Let's get me back in the saddle.”

* * *

The sigils carved into the back of his hands have begun to clot by the time they stride into the dealer's room. He's distantly aware that this is not the most inconspicuous way to operate. The spell over the people in the hotel is broken, and there's a dead body on lower level 2, but give him a break – it's been a trying couple of days.

The man under the STD cure banner looks up and sees them approaching, and his smile of recognition swiftly collapses when he notices their expressions.

“I want to see your grimmoire,” Sam demands before they're even within five feet of the table.

The dealer must be bad at reading people, because he tries to balk. “I can't just hand over my – it's an ancient artifact, _highly delicate_ – ”

Sam lifts his shirt so the man can see his still-warm gun. The man blanches and stops talking.

“Jesus, Sam,” Dean hisses, reaching over to pull his shirt down. “I may not remember anything, but I'm pretty sure you should fucking _cool it._ We still have to get out of here without anyone calling the cops.”

Sam hasn't found it easy to look at Dean since the storage room. It messes with his mind, seeing his brother's face but so much of him missing. He keeps his eyes trained steadily on the dealer instead.

“Fine!” the man says, reaching down to his briefcase and pulling out the large, leatherbound book Sam remembers from their first night at the convention, the one the man carelessly read aloud to them before they could stop him. “Here, take it. Just don't do anything crazy, okay?”

Sam grabs the book and flips through it.

Dean shuffles in, too close, and looks over his shoulder. He whistles. “Dude, you can read that?”

Sam's seen enough; he raises his eyes and pins the dealer again with a stony look. “There are spelling and grammatical errors all over this thing.”

The dealer shifts uneasily on his feet.

He shuts the book shut and slaps it down on the table. “You transcribed this crap, didn't you? Where's the real grimmoire?”

The dealer grimaces. “It didn't look the part, okay? I couldn't come in here waving around a damn _notebook_. People would think I'm a crank!”

Dean, even without his memories, seems to have an innate grip on the subtleties of Sam's facial expressions, because he says hastily, “Hand it over, would you, before my brother here does something we're all going to regret.”

The man glances between them, as if checking for visual confirmation of Dean's warning. Then he pulls out a second book from the briefcase, this one a battered black and white composition notebook, the kind that can be bought at any drug store for less than a dollar. He hands it over with poor grace.

Dean's words seem to hit him right after. “Wait, did you say brother? I thought you two were – ”

Dean flinches.

Sam carefully doesn't react at all, except to say evenly, “I'm taking these.” He hefts both books and fixes the man with a look. “If I ever hear that you're practicing magic again, I'll find you and make you eat them – every single page.”

 

They don't reverse the spell in the hotel – they've already been too obvious, and too much bloody business is about to be discovered. They go back to the room to grab their stuff, Sam intending that they retreat to their first room across town. They should have enough time there to perform the reversal.

Dean's standing in the middle of the room. His cellphone is out; he's chewing on his lip in oblivious consideration. “Do you think we should say goodbye to Maria? Tell her what happened?”

“We can text her once we're clear,” Sam says. With what Maria thinks she knows about them, he is not too concerned with keeping in contact.

He's shoving everything into their duffle bags, pulse elevated because even with everything else, they are still wanted by the feds. He keeps almost snapping at Dean before catching himself and remembering he doesn't know anything about that.

“Right. And I guess she didn't seem too happy with us, last we saw her.” Dean angles a look at him, and it's almost accusing. “But you don't seem to care about that.”

Sam killed a man, a _human_ , half an hour ago. And around this time yesterday, he was lying back on the rumpled bed a few feet away while his brother pressed kisses to the inside of his thighs.

It's strange to think about himself in two like this, stranger still to remember the confusion in that useless, empty-headed man he'd been and feels almost jealous of what he was allowed to have.

He closes his eyes for a beat.

He opens them.

He says clearly, “Dean, I don't have time to give you the whole story right now, but we need to get out of this hotel before the cops come. People from the kitchens will ID us and – and we're both wanted by about half a dozen different law enforcement agencies across the country, including the federal government.”

Dean's eyebrows rise, as if impressed, but he wisely doesn't say anything. After the briefest of pauses, he slips his phone in his pocket and nods. They finish packing in double time.

Neither of them take a last look at the room when they leave.

 

Dean is delighted by the Impala. Even without saying anything, his satisfaction is evident in the way he handles the steering wheel and cranks the dial on the tape deck. Sam tries to take comfort in it, this pure sign that there is at least one thing in Dean's life that he finds genuinely good.

Dean is less delighted by their first hotel room.

“Yeah,” he says finally, turning in place and taking in the dingy wallpaper and the thin sheets with their visible cigarette burns. “This feels more our speed.”

Sam ignores him. He crosses the room to the table in the corner and puts a hand on John's journal, which is sitting open from where he'd left it a few days ago. There's no point in thinking of how things would have gone different if they'd had it with them, but the impulse runs beneath the surface of his thoughts. Amazing what inconsequential details can fuck up your whole life.

Eventually he lifts his hand and turns back. “Okay, we can reverse the spell now. I looked it over in the car on the way here, and – should be simple.”

“That's what I like to hear,” Dean says. He strips off his jacket and take a seat on the edge of one of the beds – Sam's bed, as it happens, though it's not like the distinction matters at this point.

Sam grabs the notebook and goes to stand in front of him. He's fully prepared to read the damn thing and get it over with, but Dean stops him with a hand on his wrist.

Sam's head jerks up and he stands immobilized over him.

“Do you regret it?” Dean wants to know, eyes very clear as they rest on him. “Now that you remember, does it – does it make you sick?”

It's a son of a bitch of an unfair question, and just like Dean to ask it and expect an answer. Sam stares down at him and thinks _yes, you need to tell him_ yes.

Prisoner's dilemma rationality: Sam can keep his mouth shut now, expect Dean to follow suit regardless of his true feelings after he gets his memories back, and in this way they'll both be preserved.

Dean likes to pretend that Sam's the careful, conservative one, but deep down they both know differently. There are many things wrong with him – the list grows by the day – but the first thing has always been that he's selfish.

The second is that he's reckless.

And Dean, if he had his memories, he never would have dared ask this question, because he _knows_ Sam, and Sam, well –

“No,” he tells him, mouth dry, eyes locked on Dean's and watching them widen in surprise and something else, something lighter. “No, it doesn't make me sick.”

Sam wasn't ready, years ago. There'd been a film of denial over his eyes and heart, and it felt like there was never any other way for him to go but away. But he's seen evil, is threatened on all sides by it – including apparently a wellspring somewhere deep inside himself. There is only one thing in the world he is sure of now: if it keeps him close to Dean, it cannot possibly be evil.

(So John was right; Sam is sure he'd be thrilled, if he knew.)

Voice going soft so the words don't shatter on impact, he says, “In my lowest moments, Dean, I think God gave you to me. I – I feel _that_ , even when I can't feel anything else.” Rage and grief and a world of darkness howling at their heels, and this has always been true. He licks his lips. “Take that whichever way you want, Dean. You can ignore it, you can hit me.” And Dean jerks back a little in instinctive negation. Sam tries to smile down at him reassuringly. “So long as you don't ask me to leave – however you choose to read it – I'll agree. Okay?”

Dean's eyes are very bright, and he looks a little floored as he takes this all in, but he's still too unreadable by half for a man who shouldn't know how to hide anything from Sam.

His fingers trail down Sam's arm as he releases his wrist slowly.

“Okay, Sam.” Dean sits quietly and tilts his face up like an offering. “Bring me back.”

* * *

Somewhere on the outskirts of Atlantic City, where the sprawl is on the verge of giving way to countryside, the boys whip into the parking lot of a bar, spraying gravel.

Springsteen's on the radio and the younger is muttering about how sick everyone in this city must be of the song. All the same, he's biting his lip and shaking his head at his brother, who is singing loudly along. He's looking at him and trying not to smile as wide as he wants, as wide as they both want, because this thing between them is new and strange and even stranger for how not new it actually is.

Neither of them take note of the refrain – neither of them have yet seen something die come back – and the unheeded words fade quickly from their minds as they enter the bar. They have other things to think about, always: the road, Sam's destiny and Dean's heart.

Or, no.

Maybe it was the other way around? They forget how it goes with those two, at this point in their story.

Anyway, they weren't done listening to the song; in the darkened car, the radio turns on and fitzes to static and back, and Bruce tells the empty air where to meet again, after it all goes down, in the end.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally commissioned for (sob) Fandom Trumps Hate 2017 (yes. That's FTH _2017_ ) and, well. The struggle since Nov 2016 has obviously been VERY REAL. There were several times where I really didn't think I'd ever finish this story. 
> 
> I want to thank [puckity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/puckity/pseuds/puckity). This story would not exist without them, both because they bid on me and then, arguably more importantly, because of their support over the past year and a half. They have been incredibly understanding and gracious about how long this took. <3


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